Mutually Assured Destruction
by Tynan
Summary: It was an accident, a completely innocent mistake, a simple misunderstanding really . . . of course most wars start out that way.
1. An Unintentional Target

Wow, look at this, I'm branching out to other stories! Anyway, I thought that since Occam's Razor is taking such dark and dramatic turns, I'd write something more light-hearted on the side. Beware: This is my first attempt at humor. So, this story is set in the Occam's Razor Universe, but before Relena disappeared, (remember I mentioned that I'd write about all the little side plots brought up? This is one.) If you're not reading Occam's Razor, you can still enjoy this and not be missing anything. At any rate, enough of my chatter, enjoy!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter One – An Unintentional Targe

Tynan

Even before it happened it was too late to stop it. She was forced to watch, completely helpless from only five feet away and could do absolutely nothing. The shock on his face was immediately evident, he had clearly been caught off guard. Off in the back of her mind somewhere she could hear her friends, their cries of surprise and disbelief but all of that faded away as she watched the man in front of her. She should have been more careful . . . they both should have .

And now she would have to live with the consequences of her carelessness .

"Heero, I-I am so sorr – "

Relena was cut off by roaring laughter coming from the direction of a certain braided man; his girlfriend stood transfixed beside him, the expression on her face akin to the one Relena currently wore: pale, uncertain, and terrified. The two women's gazes met; for how long they stared at each other neither could be sure. Duo was still laughing, though more quietly now, but they ignored both him and the other subdued chuckles that escaped a few of their friends. It was Heero, finally moving that brought them too their senses

Under any other circumstances this may have been very funny, however seeing Heero Yuy covered from his waist up in the remnants of what had once been Duo's birthday cake only meant one thing: a slow death for those responsible.

And Relena and Hilde could already tell he knew who was responsible.

In their defense, at least part of this was his fault. Relena had tried to insist that she be the one to carry Duo's birthday cake to him . . . the one that she and Hilde had set with a small, absolutely harmless air pressure charge attached to a timer. Hilde's desire to make her boyfriend's birthday enjoyable was not so much that it outweighed her desire for revenge for the many pranks he had pulled on her in the past. She had enlisted Relena's help with little convincing and so when ESUN's Foreign Minister stepped into the kitchen to retrieve the culinary concoction in question, she had dutifully followed her best friend's instructions and set the charge just as Hilde had shown. What she had not anticipated was a certain ex-Gundam pilot's sudden appearance and his unexpected desire to be helpful .

She had tried to take the cake away from him, following him onto the porch, desperately making a grab for it. In retrospect, if she hadn't interfered, maybe Heero would have set it down in front of Duo in time . . . but there was no going back and changing the past. She had said many times that the people of Earth had to learn to live in the present rather than waste their lives imagining how things might have gone differently. For the moment however, she could not seem to take her own good advice .

Again Duo's voice jarred her from her thoughts, "Oh man . . . so-someone's" he broke down into laughter yet again, but recovered quickly "someone's got to have a camera, p-please! Man, I need to remember this forever! "

"Duo, shut-up." Hilde growled from between clenched teeth.

But her boyfriend would hear none of it, "Aw, Heero, man you should have seen the look on your face! That thing just exploded –" He stopped short as a thought had clearly just occurred to him, "Wait a second, that was supposed to be for me wasn't it?!?

Duo stood from his seat frantically scanned the room, "Who was trying to blow up my birthday cake?!" Wufei shrugged from his seat in the corner, a look of slight amusement on his face, beside him Sally looked torn between a trying not laugh and being too stunned to. Noin and Zechs sat beside them, wine glasses in hand; Noin couldn't stop her eyes from darting back and forth between Relena and Heero, her husband was making no attempt to hide the slight laughter still coming from his mouth. That only left two people

"Hilde, babe, you were . . . you would do something like that to me?"

He really almost sounded hurt, but she wasn't buying it for a minute. Snapping out of her daze, Hilde whipped her head around to face Duo, "It was supposed to be payback for everything you've pulled over the past three years! "

"But, babe, on my birthday?"

"Well you shouldn't have chosen April Fool's Day as your birthday, Maxwell!" Hilde knew she was panicking, desperately trying to come up with any possible explanation for their behavior; maybe if Heero knew their plan had been directed at Duo he would take mercy on them.

"Hey, it's not my fault I don't know when my real birthday is! I thought today was appropriate . . ."

Hilde tuned him out as she turned back to Heero, waiting for him to make his move . . . wondering what it would be.

She looked over to the man in question, still wearing a considerable amount of cake and icing. Relena was just to the side of him, though Hilde noted, well out of arm's reach. Being far braver than Hilde ever could have imagined herself, Relena took a cautious step towards Heero.

"H-heero, I, we, . . . it wasn't for . . . Heero I am so sorry." Her voice shook a considerable amount.

She held out a napkin and to her great surprise he allowed the now basically empty platter he was holding to fall to the ground and took the square piece of cloth from her. With surgical like precision, he slowly and deliberately wiped as much of the cake residue off his handsome face as the small napkin would allow.

Without a word he handed it back to Relena, who took it and again stepped a good bit back again. Gracefully he bent down to retrieve the platter from where he had let it fall and set in on the chair next to him. Taking his first steps since the explosion that had seemed to take place days ago, but really had only been a few minutes back, Heero turned to face Relena, the tiniest hint of a sadistic smile playing on his features.

"Payback's gonna be a bitch."


	2. Retaliatory Strike

Hmm, second chapter already. These are fun to write, and I can sit down and hammer one out in like an hour and a half, (those of you reading Occam's Razor, don't worry, I'm still plugging away at that too). Anyway, depending on how devious I'm feeling I may continue to torture these guys for a long time to come . . .

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Two – Retaliatory Strike

Tynan

Francheska Biddle was doing everything in her power not to stare. However, given her boss's current, well state, that was not such an easy task.

It was Monday morning; Monday morning meant that Relena met with Francheska, her personal aide at the café down the street from the capital building. As with every other Monday morning previous, Francheska made sure to be at least fifteen minutes early; she took their usual seat by the window, ordered their usual three cups of coffee, a toasted everything bagel, and a blue berry muffin, and as usual they were brought to the table just as her boss, and mentor entered the café with Preventers Officer First-Class Jackie Murphy in tow . . . only this time Relena was no where to be found as their breakfast turned up.

Francheska had waited patiently as their coffee began to get cold; just as she was beginning to worry the door to the café burst open and a confusing looking Jackie Murphy was half pushed, half walked into the building; crouched behind her was a frazzled, and frightened Relena Peacecraft. She peered over Jackie's shoulder, spotted Francheska, and quickly made her way over to the table, leaving her security officer to follow after her.

Ten minutes later Francheska sat opposite her boss, who seemed distracted to say the least. Jackie stood behind them, also casting a curious expression in Relena's direction but the petite blonde woman did not seem to notice. She did however notice every single movement made within a ten foot radius of her person.

"Ma'am?"

"Huh?" Relena answered thickly at the sound of Francheska's voice.

"The proposal, Miss Peacecraft, you asked me to have it ready to go over this morning." She removed the thick manila envelope from her briefcase and handed it to Relena.

Francheska could not help the expression of confusion and concern on her face as she watched the ESUN Foreign Minister take the folder from her with two fingers, then hold it at arms length, opening it as though she thought it might explode. After determining that the contents of the envelope was not in fact harmful, Relena extracted the pile of papers and began skimming them, though Francheska got the distinct impression that she was not comprehending anything on the pages in front of her.

"Miss Peacecraft?"

Relena's head shot up; she looked around frantically before turning to Francheska, "What's wrong? Did you see something?!"

Francheska tried not to look surprised, "N-no ma'am, I was just . . . do you feel alright ma'am?"

Relena looked at her as though she could not possible understand why her assistant might think she was not well.

"Maybe, you'd like to continue this in your office ma'am?" Francheska asked in as imploring a manner as she could, fortunately Relena did not require much convincing.

"Yes, yes I think that would be a good idea!" She began putting the files in front of her in her own briefcase and began mumbling to herself, "It's much to crowded in here, too hard to concentrate and pay attention at the same time . . ."

Without a word she stood up and went straight for the door before Jackie even had a chance to step away from her post near the window and set her own coffee cup back on the table. She cast Francheska a confused look as the two women followed the Foreign Minister out the door. "Is she okay?"

Francheska shrugged, "I was going to ask you the same thing . . . has she been like this all morning?"

"When I picked her up she spent ten minutes checking the back seat of the car before she would get in it, for what I have no idea. Then on the drive over here she kept asking if I had seen or heard from Agent Yuy. I tried to tell her that I hadn't seen him since Friday evening, but she didn't seem to believe me . . . she kept mumbling that just because I didn't see him, doesn't mean that he wasn't there." Jackie checked her watch as they approached the car and began digging her keys out of her jacket pocket, but stopped dead.

Relena was standing in front of the open back door poking the seats with a stick she had apparently picked up off the ground.

- - - - -

The drive to the office was tense but uneventful; despite Francheska's good-natured prodding Relena refused to divulge any reason for her sudden paranoia. She hardly waited for Jackie to stop the car before leaping out and bolting into the Capital Building, through the Main Chamber, up four flights of stairs, down two halls and into her office, practically slamming the door in Francheska's face who had been making the best attempt she could to keep up with her boss.

Once inside Relena, cautiously scanned the reception area, drawing a stare from her Personal Secretary, Edith Bolling.

"Good morning, Foreign Minister, how –"

"You received my message Edith?!" Relena practically screamed, cutting the older woman off.

"Y-yes, Miss Peacecraft." she answered, clearly startled. "I made sure that – "

"Excellent, thank you Edith!" With a flip of her hair and a nervous smile, Relena set off for her office, Francheska again jogging to keep up with her.

Following her boss into her private office, she shut the door behind her as Relena took a seat behind her desk, looking somewhat relieved.

"Excellent, excellent," she murmured to apparently no one, "Well then, Francheska, let's go over this proposal again, I apologize for earlier, I was somewhat distracted, however – " Relena's voice stopped short as she pulled open one of the drawers in her desk . . . well tried to anyway.

The Foreign Minister's face immediately contorted into something resembling a mix of confusion and anger as she yanked at the drawer again, much harder this time. When it would not give she tried the one below it, then the one below that, the three on the other side, and finally the thin one above her legs. None of the drawers would budge the tiniest bit.

Francheska could have sworn she saw steam coming out of her mentor's ears, "Umm, Miss Peacecraft, ma'am is everything – "

Without warning, Relena practically jumped out of her seat, standing straight up behind her desk, threw her head back and let out something between a growl and a scream. "That jerk! How the hell did he . . . ?!"

She flung her arms onto the desk and lunged to the far right corner for the phone, meaning to lift the receiver, but to her shock it would not budge, nor would the entire communication unit move from its perch at the far corner of her desk.

Letting out a long breath and maintaining her clam, Relena stood up perfectly straight again and smoothed out her business suit. Relieved to see that the woman had calmed down, Francheska nearly jumped out of her skin when Relena suddenly bellowed: "Edith!!!"

A few scurrying and bumping noises later the secretary in question had appeared in Relena's door, not even getting a chance to ask why she was called from her post before the Foreign Minister practically accosted her.

"Edith, you said you got my message!"

She looked confused, "Yes Miss Peacecraft, and I followed your instructions, no visitors were allowed in your office when you were not here."

Relena gestured wildly to the desk in front of her, "Well someone was in here!!!"

Edith just nodded to her, "Well yes, ma'am, Agent Yuy stopped by this morning, said he needed to drop something off for you."

Relena's eyes grew to the size of saucers, she sounded almost deranged, "And you let him in?!?!"

"And made him coffee." Her secretary was smiling now in a slightly twisted sort of way, "May I ask what this is all about ma'am?"

But Relena was in no mood, "Edith, I said no visitors!"

She was still smiling, "And Agent Yuy is head of your security detail ma'am, he wasn't here to see you, just to drop something off."

Relena put her hand on her face and collapsed into her chair, "Edith, would you please go through my phonebook and put in a call to Hilde Schbeiker . . . tell her we have work to do."

The older woman smiled at her once more, answered "Of course, ma'am." and disappeared out the door.

Relena let her head fall into her hands, "Francheska, would you please find someone from maintenance and tell them I'm going to need someone with a saw in my office."

Francheska nodded dumbly but paused before walking out of the room, "Ma'am . . . you have a message."

Relena looked up, the expression on her face nothing short of perplexed, "What?"

"On your phone ma'am, you have a message." Sure enough, a small red light was blinking at the top of the unit, she turned back to Francheska, "I can't pick up the receiver to hear it, whatever it is."

"You could still use the speak phone ma'am." Before being asked, Francheska leaned over Relena's desk and tapped several keys.

"You have ONE new message," the soothing, female electronic voice rang out, "First new message:"

Heero's cool, even voice emanated from the speaker, "Told you."

(more to come . . .)


	3. Second Strike Capabilities

And here's chapter three; I think that I'm going to updating this every Thursday from now on . . . we'll see how long it goes on for (or how many diabolical things I can come up with them to do to each other ;) ). Thank you so much to everyone that's been reviewing, glad you're all enjoying it!!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Three - Second Strike Capabilities

Tynan

"He what?!"

"All four of the doors on my car and the trunk glued shut . . . he is so lucky that I don't have to drive to work."

"I might as well have not come today, I'm waiting for the nice man with the electric saw to finish making a great deal of noise so that I can get a new telephone in my office and order a new desk."

" . . . We can't let them get away with this."

"Them?"

"Oh come on Relena, do you really think that Duo had no part in this?!"

"I suppose you're right."

"Yes, so now that we're in agreement, what are we going to do about this?"

- - - - -

Heero couldn't help but feel slightly accomplished; it wasn't even 8:30 in the morning and he'd already managed to ruin two people's days. Generally he didn't like to gloat, but that overwhelming sense of accomplishment kept getting to him. On some level he couldn't take too much pride in his work, it had really been too easy. Duo had been more than willing to leave their garage unlocked and prepare the industrial strength epoxy solution he needed from the supplies at Hilde's shop behind their house.

Getting into Relena's office had been even easier; Mrs. Bolling was a very sweet old lady who adored Relena, and therefore also adored the man who was responsible for keeping her safe. Bearing these facts in mind, he tried not to take too much pleasure in thinking about what the expressions on each of their faces must have been . . . but he still couldn't help but smile.

Duo, on the other hand, was making no such attempt. "Aw man, I wish we could have seen the looks on their faces," he doubled over with renewed laughter, "Hilde's totally gonna kill me, but this was so worth it . . ."

Heero smirked to himself, there was just something so sweet about revenge.

- - - - -

"Remember, it has to happen the same time."

"You're sure this will work?"

"Trust me, he leaves the same time everyday."

"What if he's got extra work left over from taking the time to glue my car and your desk shut this morning?"

"Heero Yuy doesn't fall behind on work . . . and after watching them cut my desk apart all morning, I've been waiting for this since lunch."

- - - - -

There was a knock at the door and Duo couldn't help but be annoyed; he was literally on his way out the door and now someone was going to come dump a mountain of paper work on his desk that just had to be taken care of by tomorrow morning. However, when the door did open he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or worried.

"Hi Duo." Hilde's voice was sweet and quiet, she looked . . . dare he call it repentant?

Regardless, he couldn't afford to let his guard down. "Hilde, babe," he began cautiously, but couldn't help the smile that crossed his face. To his surprise she didn't try to smack it off of him.

Instead she sighed and shrugged her shoulders in a defeated way, "Alright, you guys got us, I'll admit it."

Duo's eyes bugged, "You will?!" but he quickly regained his composure, "I mean of course you will." he continued, sounding more confident. Hilde let her eyes fall to the floor and Duo couldn't help be feel a little bad, "Aw, come on babe, don't feel bad . . . I mean you and Lena never really had a chance once Heero set his sights on you."

She smiled the tiniest bit, "I guess you're right . . ." she began to cross the room and crawled into his lap, her legs straddling his waist and she leaned in close to his ear, "But I know you had something to do with all this . . . Heero never could have done all this without you . . ."

Duo couldn't help but allow his own pride to swell, "Well, I mean come on Hilde, you know Heero's basically hopeless without me."

"Mmhmm, we should have known better than to think we could get away from you." she began sucking on his earlobe, distracting him from the point he was about to make . . . whatever it had been.

"Yeah," he answered thickly, "you two never, umm . . ." she moved down to his neck, "I, uh there wasn't anything . . ." All rational thought went by the wayside as she began unbuttoning his shirt.

- - - - -

Heero closed his eyes and let the hot water pour over his head and onto his shoulders. He liked to stay late and get his daily workout in when most of the other daytime personnel had already gone home. As was often the case the gym had been near empty and the locker room even more so leaving him to exercise and shower in peace before heading home for the night.

He turned the taps on the wall in front of his so that the water flow diminished and stopped. He shook out access water out of his hair and wiped it out of his eyes, as he reached outside the stall for the towel he had hung on the hook when he entered . . . and quickly discovered it was not there.

Snapping to attention, he stuck his head outside the curtain and gaped in annoyance at the empty wall. Drawing in a breath he sighed and pushed aside the shower curtain, stepping onto the tiled walkway and making his way towards the laundry area; he was pretty sure that no one else was here, and even if they were . . . well this was the men's locker room, nothing they hadn't seen before.

As he continued to the end of the row of showers Heero turned the corner and made his way past the many rows of lockers considering as he went what might have happened to his towel. He had heard someone while he was in the shower and assumed it to be a fellow colleague, but if they had taken his towel it must have been the cleaning service.

He stopped in front of a narrow door, which opened to the laundry area, which was ordinarily stacked with clean neatly folded towels, which were piled on the many shelves that lined the room . . . which were all empty. Heero walked to the center of the room, naked, dripping, and bewildered; there was no way that the cleaning staff had suddenly decided to remove all of the locker room's towels Something was clearly going on here.

He practically ran back to his locker at a frantic pace, but he already knew what he would find there. Sure enough, it lay open, empty of everything but his boots, his car keys, and his wallet.

'_Relena.' _

He had committed one of warfare's greatest flaws and underestimated his opponent. He had not anticipated any sort of retaliation from the long declared pacifist, certainly not so bold a maneuver, but she had used the element of surprise to her advantage and struck a crippling blow. Regardless, he would strike back, he would make her understand that when it came to battle, to war, she was no match for him.

However, in the meantime, more immediate problems had to be dealt with. He was still completely naked, alone in the men's locker room of Preventers Head Quarters and all of a sudden feeling very exposed and completely stranded. She had left nothing that he could possibly cover himself up with and somehow he did not feel that walking back up to his office wearing only what God had given him was the best way to command the respect of his colleagues and subordinates.

As much as it pained him to, he had no choice but to call Duo and get him to bring down some clothes. As soon as the thought stuck him, it was dismissed; Relena had taken his cell phone as well. In a regretful way, he was almost proud of her, she had really thought of everything.

Well actually, not quite everything. Heero smirked to himself as he remembered the internal usage phone that was mounted to the wall just outside the locker room door. It was easily in view of the public, but if he was fast enough he could lean out of the door, grab the receiver, pull it back into the locker room, and call Duo from there.

Reaching his arm out to snatch the phone from its mount had been easy enough, slightly more difficult had been dialing Duo's extension without being able to see the key pad, but he had managed, though he also managed to shut his arm in the door in the process. He waited patiently while the phone rang, praying that Duo was still in his office and that no one would notice the phone cord sticking out of the locker room door. Just as he was about to abandon hope, there was a 'click' on the other end.

"Duo Maxwe – "

"It's Heero."

"Heero!" the other man sounded relieved to say the least, "Man, thank God you called, I've been trying to get you on your cell phone for like half an hour!"

Heero tried not to sound bitter, "There's a problem with my cell phone . . ."

They both began talking at once.

"Hey man, could you come up here, I need a favor."

"I need you to come down to the locker rooms."

Both stopped and responded in unison: "I can't go anywhere."

Heero looked at the phone in disbelief, "I'm not joking around Duo, I need you to come down here and bring me some clothes!"

Duo made something like a choking noise before he sputtered into the phone, "S-she got you too?! Aw man . . ."

Heero felt his blood run cold and dread filled his stomach, "What do you mean 'got me too'?"

He could almost feel Duo scratching his head in that nervous manner of his, "Well, ya see . . . well Hilde showed up before," Heero let his head fall against the wall, "And, okay yes, I'll admit it: she totally played me!" He sounded angry now, "She came in here looking all sad and pretending to be sorry so that she could take advantage of me!"

"Take advantage of you?"

"Yeah! Well okay, I mean . . . I thought that she was sorry!!!"

Heero drew his head back from the wall and let it fall into it again, as Duo continued, "Anyway, so umm . . . well she's, ya know . . . and well afterwards I was, well I kinda dozed off in my chair . . ."

"Duo?" Heero's voice was threatening but calm.

"So yeah, I came to and she had left and umm . . . well all of my clothes were gone . . . actually so was everything that I could have you know, used . . ."

Heero hit his head against the wall again. So this is how they were going to play, well game on girls.

"Hey umm, Heero?"

"Yeah?"

"So uh . . . when we manage to get out of here, can I come crash at your place?"

"Wha – my place?"

"Well I'm sure as hell not going home after this!"

Oh yes, from here on out, this was war.


	4. Domestic Assault

Okay, Chapter Four! I'm surprised (and obviously very happy) by all the people who have enjoyed this story so much. Thank you so much for the reviews, I love hearing what you guys think of the story! I promise I'll keep this a light-hearted, humorous adventure, (if you're looking for drama, go read Occam's Razor, which I swear I'll be updating soon). I keep sitting around thinking about what other sort of horrible things I'm going to keep tormenting these poor characters with, and don't worry, I've got plenty in mind . . .

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Four – Domestic Assault

Tynan

"I have confirmed sighting of the targets at the predicted location."

"And their status?"

"They're celebrating, the wenches! Seriously Heero, they've got like three bottles of wine and they're laughing and giggling and all! I swear to God, I'm gonna -"

"Do not engage the targets! It they're intoxicated it will make the mission parameters easier to obtain."

"Yeah, yeah copy that . . ."

"Maintain visual and report back as soon as they depart. I'm preparing the necessary equipment and supplies; I'll have yours ready for pick up as soon as we confirm they're indisposed."

- - - - -

Hilde threw her head back and laughed, her voice filling the pub as Relena refilled her glass. "Oh, I wish I could have seen his face! This will teach him to just conk out on me afterwards!"

Relena blushed a little, though it could have been the wine. "I swear the whole time I was in the locker room, I thought Heero was going to catch me."

"Oh even if he had, he'd been too embarrassed to do anything but jump back behind the curtain and start stuttering while you made a break for it."

Relena giggled in response, "You know they're going to be doing everything in their power to get us back for this . . . you might want to stay at my house until this whole affair subsides Hilde."

But her friend waved her off, "Relena please, do you really think that he'd dare go back to the house after this?"

She nodded, "I guess not, still though . . ."

Hilde, however, would not hear it, "Oh what are you worried about? You've got an armed guard basically 24-7?"

"Exactly! Heero and your boyfriend are in charge of it!"

The dark haired girl looked as though she was about to protest the statement but she was interrupted by the arrival of the bartender. "All right then ladies? Can I be gettin' you anything more then?"

Relena grinned at him, "No thank you Doyle, just the bill please."

After paying, Relena and Hilde stumbled to the street, into separate cabs, and off to a doomed night.

- - - - -

"Confirmed departure of the targets."

"They left separately?"

"Affirmative."

"Excellent, supplies are waiting for you in the designated drop spot."

"You got everything I asked for?"

"Affirmative, call if you require assistance and report in when you've accomplished the mission."

"Roger-Wilco, over and out."

- - - - -

Jackie Murphy sat bolt upright in her bed. There was a phone ringing somewhere in her room, but it wasn't her land line. Throwing aside the covers she leapt out of bed and frantically grabbed the still ringing cell phone in her work bag . . . her standard issues Preventers cell phone, the one that never rung when she was off duty unless there was an emergency.

Looking at the number on the caller ID her heart sped up and she flipped open the phone and held it to her ear, "Agent Yuy, this is Officer Murphy. What's the situation sir?"

"Calm down, Murphy. There's no situation." It could have been her imagination, but her commanding officer sounded . . . dare she call it happy? He continued, "I'm sorry to wake you at this hour –"

"Not at all sir!" she interrupted, but he paid no mind.

"Yes, well as I said, I apologize for waking you. I wanted to call to inform you that I'll be handling the Foreign Minister's transport to her office tomorrow morning. You won't be needed until 8:30, so take this opportunity to sleep in a bit."

With that he terminated the connection, leaving a very confused Preventers officer in his wake. Jackie puzzled the conversation over in her mind as she walked back to bed; her and the other three officers assigned to Agent Yuy's command rotated weeks transporting the Foreign Minister back and forth to her office . . . it was a menial task, certainly not one that required the attention of an agent of Heero Yuy's caliber. As Jackie drifted off to sleep she couldn't help but wonder what was going on . . .

- - - - -

Relena reached her arm out from under the covers in order to slap her alarm clock off. Sitting up she rubbed her eyes and tried to ignore the headache that was developing; she really shouldn't have drank so much last night. As she continued to massage her throbbing head she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up . . . only to immediately shriek and recoil back onto the bed as her feet came into contact with something cold, squishy, and wet.

Looking around her room for the first time she gaped in horror at the floor; thousands of tiny Dixie Cups, each filled nearly to the brim with colored water, covered the plush, white carpet. At a complete loss for words she looked at her soaked feet which were now stained a light shade of blue. With complete disregard for her sheets she stood on the large bed, backing against the head board as if the cups might bite her.

Relena surveyed the room, save for a small patch by the door, every inch of the floor was covered in the cups and the phone that was usually beside her nightstand was no where to be found; her only recourse was to make a path for herself. Laying over the edge on her stomach she leaned down to the floor and lifted one of the cups. To her horror, the cups surrounding it also lifted off the floor, wilting, tearing, and spilling their colored contents on the floor. She set the now soggy piece of paper on the floor again and upon quick inspection discovered that, not only had the cups had been stapled together, but in their cheap design and production they were beginning to absorb much of the liquid they were holding, even the slightest touch would cause them to disintegrate. Trying to pull the cups apart would only create more of a mess.

Sighing Relena flopped backwards on the bed and stared out over the expanse of small paper containers, several red colored ones catching her eye. Standing to get a better look, she quickly discovered that they formed letters, letters which formed words, words which read 'THIS IS WAR'.

- - - - -

Hilde rolled over and swung her arm over her head in order to reach for her alarm clock . . . and sat bolt up right in bed as it became entangled with something.

Well she tried to sit up anyway, but her torso quickly met the same fate as her arm. Focusing her vision Hilde surveyed her bedroom, or what she could see of it at least. Everywhere she looked thick white string was stretched out in front of her, like some sort of horrible spider web. Immediately realizing that these were the repercussions of her actions yesterday, she took a deep breath and collected herself, then mustering her strength pushed aside as much of the string as she could with one good sweep of her arm . . . then screamed, loud and clear as she was doused in cold water.

Soaked and fuming Hilde looked above her bed to find a bucket dangling over her; written on the bottom in Duo's trademark scrawl was 'All's fair . . .'

- - - - -

Relena's voice was horse from yelling for someone to come rescue her, so when there was a knock at the door she felt an overwhelming sense of relief wash over her . . . which quickly dissipated as soon as the door opened and Heero Yuy strolled in, coffee mug in one hand and newspaper tucked under the other.

To her horror and annoyance he smiled at her as he stood in the only clear patch of the floor. "Well, good morning, Foreign Minister. Still in bed I see?"

Relena could no longer contain herself, "How the hell did you do this?!"

He looked at her with as innocent an expression as he could muster, "I have no idea what you're talking about Miss Peacecraft."

She glared back at him, "I'm serious Heero, I have to go to work!!"

He just shrugged, "So go."

Practically growling in frustration Relena looked around for something to throw at him.

- - - - -

Hilde had made it about four feet from her bed, which considering most people would have needed a machete to get that far was something. In the eight or so feet she'd managed to travel she'd been had another bucket of liquid dumped on her, (this time something sticky) tread across a pile of feathers which were now sticking to every part of her body below her waist, and come into contact with a section of the string maze that had apparently been coated some kind of color chalk so that bright lines of red, yellow, and blue now zigzagged across her skin.

Hilde could see the door not another ten feet in front of her . . . but making that trip was going to take every bit of training she could remember. In the meantime, she could imagine the horrible things she was going to do to her beloved boyfriend as motivation to survive.

- - - - -

"Alright Heero, you got me. Now this has been very fun and all but, Officer Murphy's going to be here any -"

"No she's not." he interrupted her.

Relena tried not to sputter as she glared at where Heero had pulled a large squishy armchair into the clean spot by the door and was reading the paper while drinking his morning coffee. "What do you mean she's not coming?"

He looked up from the newspaper, with a casually interested expression on his face, "I called her last night and told her that I'd handle your transport this morning," he turned back to his reading, "She's been working very hard lately, I thought she needed a break." he continued off-handedly.

"Heero, this is ridiculous, I have to go to work!" she tried to yell at him but her voice was still sore.

The expression on his face was a twisted cross between innocent confusion and a sadistic smile, "I'm not stopping you."

Relena stood again and stomped over to the edge of her bed, never wanting to throttle someone so badly before in her life; she was only eight or so feet from him, maybe if she took a running jump . . . "Of course you are! You've trapped me in my bed!"

He raised his eyebrows, just as she realized what she had said, "Hmm, better not let that one get around the office . . ." he flipped the page of his newspaper, "But as I said before, Miss Peacecraft, I'm only here to protect you, if you want to stay in bed late this morning that's fine with me, we'll leave whenever you're ready."

The tone of his voice made her want to hurt him bad enough that she considered running across the cups just to do that, however glancing down at her feet she changed her mind. Whatever Heero had dyed that water with apparently darkened over time . . . her first encounter had left all of the skin up to her ankles a lovely shade of cerulean blue, she shuddered to think what might happen to them if she came into contact with the water again. Fuming she glanced back over to where Heero still sat, taking a long draw out of his mug and apparently draining it.

He stood and set the paper aside, "I'm going to go get some more coffee, do you want any?"

Relena sat bolt upright, "Heero Yuy, don't you dare just leave me here!"

Heero turned back to face her, that small, infuriating, incredibly handsome . . . No, not handsome! It was a bad smile, a very nice . . . No! Bad smile! . . . Whatever it was he was still wearing it as he spoke, "You mean in your own bedroom? Surely Relena, this is much better than being left completely naked in a locker room for and hour and a half while you wait for Duo to convince Sally to bring some scrubs to his office then for him to come down with a pair for you." With that he spun on his heals and marched down the hall.

- - - - -

Hilde could just barely make out the door in front of her. How Duo had managed to pull something off like this she could not even begin to fathom, but she would be sure to find out when she was torturing him to death.

Pausing for a minute to catch her breath, Hilde looked down at the mess she had become. She was still soaked, streaked with colored chalk marks, and covered in feathers but now could chocolate syrup and something that was turning the right half of her body a dark shade of blue to the list of things that had been dumped on her.

Hilde took a deep breath and with one last push forward seized the door handle but stopped. She pushed it open the tiniest bit, waiting for whatever final booby trap Duo had set on the other side. To her surprise none came and forced the door open the rest of the way; no sooner had she stepped through it than she felt her foot catch on a trip wire and was suddenly accosted by an unknown number of cans of silly string.

Resigning herself to the situation, Hilde just stood there and waited for it to be over. Wiping the foamy substance from her face Hilde suddenly realized something else sat in front of her . . . a video camera mounted to a tripod, and attached was a note.

'Just wanted to see your face first thing in the morning . . . you always look your best right when you wake up."

- - - - -

Relena sat on the edge of her bathtub and looked down at her feet. After finally realizing that there was no other way out, she'd made the slow march across the cups to her desk, told the office she'd be late today, and had since been soaking and scrubbing her feet for almost an hour with no discernible results.

Beside her sat her cell phone, which she was impatiently waiting to ring after calling Hilde several times to make sure she had survived the morning. Just as she was contemplating sending someone to check on her friend, the phone began to ring.

"Hilde?!"

"I'm going to murder my boyfriend the first chance I get."

"They got you too?"

" . . . I'll tell you about it when we meet."

"Meet for what?"

"Relena, you're not seriously considering letting them get away with this?"

"Hilde, how much longer can this go on –"

"Don't get into your pacifism mode now! After what they pulled this is war!"

Relena looked down at her feet, a renewed desire for revenge bubbling to the surface, "So what's the plan then?"


	5. An Unconventional Attack

And Chapter 5 is here. I apologize in advance for the snippets of stereotypical Wufei-ism, but the opportunities were just too good to pass up. Thank you so much for all the reviews; it's nice to be writing something that's funny and is making people laugh (and I'm really enjoying writing this!). Anyway, so here's Chapter 5, see you in a week!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Five – An Unconventional Attack

Tynan

- - - - -

"We'll go to prison."

"Only if they catch us."

"And you think they won't figure out it was us, Hilde?"

"Okay, scratch that, what about the first plan?"

"Five to ten years."

". . . Do we have any plans that don't result in us going to jail?"

"Hilde, we're going about this the wrong way."

"How do you figure?"

"We need to get them where they cannot escape."

"You mean lock them up naked again?"

"I mean, that we need to put them in a situation that despite all their training and all their skill, they simply cannot get out of."

- - - - -

It was almost 10:30 when Heero finally made it to his office. Relena had taken over an hour in the bathroom and even after that he could distinctly see her feet were still dark blue under the pants, stockings, and very conservative shoes she chose to try and hide it. The drive to her office had been completely soundless; and she shunned the usual escort into the building he should have provided, instead finding a nearby security officer. Heero couldn't help but smile to himself as she threw her silent hissy fit.

He made his way down the hall and stopped in front of his office door while he dug his keys out but discovered it was already unlocked. Suspicion immediately gripped him. He had only left Relena about 20 minutes ago, there was no way she could have set up anything already. Still, it was better to be on the safe side; he stepped off the side of the door and pushed it open with his foot.

Nothing happened.

Cautiously he tilted his head around the side and was met with –

"Hey buddy, what the hell took you so long?"

Heero felt his shoulders drop as he crossed the threshold into his office, "How did you get in here?"

His friend held something that looked like it may have once been a paper clip and a small pocket knife, Heero rolled his eyes but Duo just grinned, "Hey everyone's got a talent right?"

"Why are you here?"

"Well duh! To show you the results of our little endeavors last night! Geez, for being so brilliant you're pretty thick." It was just then that Heero noticed the laptop Duo had propped on his desk. Duo turned the device around and revealed it to be playing a video of Hilde stumbling out of hers and Duo's bedroom only to be assaulted with several cans of what looked like silly string. For a moment she just stood there before lunging for the camera and the screen went black.

Duo was doubled over laughing again, "Oh man, I am never going to get tired of see that . . ."

"They'll be coming after us again. We'll need to be on our guard."

"Heero, come on we're talking about the pacifist princess and my girlfriend both of whom are madly in love with the two men in this room." He reclined in his chair, "Besides, now that we know to keep an eye out for them, what do you really think that they're going to be able to get one over on us?"

- - - - -

"You actually pulled it off?!"

"It wasn't that hard really . . . the papers were just sitting right out there for anyone who happened to walk by."

"So when's it going to be?"

"Tomorrow, well that's probably when they'll find out anyway."

"Wow Relena, I gotta say I'm impressed, I didn't think you had something this malicious in you."

"Yes well, I think it must have seeped into my blood stream with all that blue dye still staining my feet."

- - - - -

Heero glanced around the loud and semi-crowded room in a suspicious manner; yes the likelihood of something happening in the Preventers HQ cafeteria was slim, but still one had to be on their guard. Especially when it had been 24 hours and there had been no retaliation from the girls. Duo chalked this up to their surrender, but Heero was not so willing to accept that . . . Relena had been pretty pissed off.

Across the table Wufei was eyeing him curious while simultaneously trying to ignore the ranting of the braided man who sat beside him. Yuy seemed on edge; while some degree of paranoia was to be expected as part of his usual demeanor something seemed . . . off. The thought was suddenly pushed out of his mind as Duo's hand clamped around his shoulder.

"I'm telling ya man, you should have seen it. Well, actually I have the video, swing by my office I'll –"

"Maxwell, what makes you think that I'm even remotely interested in watching of video of you accosting your girlfriend with various colored and food substances?"

Duo looked borderline insulted, "Hey do you have any idea how long that took me to set up? I'm keeping that video forever, we'll show it to the kids one day and tell them that this is how Mommy –"

"Ah, Agents Yuy and Maxwell."

The two men looked up from their sandwiches to see their fearless leader, the Commander of the Preventers Bureau, one Lady Une gazing back at them . . . and smiling.

As if this wasn't unsettling enough she took the seat next to Heero, setting down her own lunch which was wrapped to go. "Just the men I was looking to see, if you don't mind I'll just join you for a moment so we can go over this evening's plans. I'll have the actual schedules e-mailed to you once I get back to my office. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised to see the two of you are starting to take a more active interest in the . . ."

She kept talking but Duo and Heero had stopped listening in order to exchange confused glances. After shrugging to one another Heero finally turned to the woman beside him and in as cautious a voice as he could muster asked, "Commander, what are you talking about?"

Une stopped abruptly and looked back and forth between her agents, "Well the Open House and Registration Day at the Academy tonight, of course. The both of you signed up for yesterday."

Duo felt the blood drain from his face and slowly he turned to meet Heero's eyes which looked as though they might shoot death rays at him at any moment. He glanced back towards Une, "Um Commander, we didn't . . . well, I don't think – "

"You don't think what Maxwell?" her tone had suddenly switched back to the more threatening one he knew so well.

Duo shifted in his seat a bit, "Well you see, umm Heero and me, we didn't actually sign up for –"

"Are you telling me, Agent Maxwell, that both you and Agent Yuy are suddenly unwilling to carry out a task that you already designated for yourselves?"

Duo felt himself beginning to break under her glare; across the table Heero was still trying to kill him with his eyes, next to him Wufei was snickering a bit. "N-no ma'am."

"Excellent, well then I'll see both of you at 2:30 for set up." She stood and picked up the box containing her lunch. "I had asked that everyone register in teams of three, but I suppose we'll just have to find someone else to join –" she stopped dead and her eyes came to rest on Wufei, "Actually, Agent Chang, you're not scheduled for anything important tomorrow. Why don't you be Agent Yuy and Maxwell's third man?"

Wufei sat bolt upright in his chair, a frantic look on his face, "Commander, I can't –"

"I'll see the three of you in a few hours then." And with that she spun on her heels and marched towards the door.

If looks could kill there wouldn't be enough left of Duo to bury.

- - - -

"So what do you find you get out of be a Preventer?"

"Long hours and people shooting at you."

The girl looked slightly take a back to Heero's annoyance did not get up and leave the way the last one did. At the table next to him Wufei didn't seem to be fairing as well either.

"And what exactly do you do within the agency?" It was hard to tell if the young man seated across from him was actually not afraid or just plain stupid.

"I work in Special Operations, all other information is classified Level 7 clearance."

He nodded in return, "Yes you said that already, so what can you tell me?"

Wufei leveled his eyes with the man, noting that his name tag read 'Todd', "I can tell you that this job is not for the lazy. Stupid they can work with; they can scare the stupid out of you. But lazy, that runs deep."

Todd looked almost insulted, "And what makes you think that I'm lazy?"

"You're wearing two different socks, you haven't shaved in at lease a week, and according to your resume you haven't been employed in over a year and a half." Wufei held the piece of paper up for the young man to see though he wasn't entirely convinced that he could actually read it.

He rolled his eyes as the young man got up and walked away. Behind him he could hear Duo ranting to a young woman of about 20 who had had the misfortune to sit down and talk with him.

"And then there was this other mission, man I really thought that we were all going die that time. I mean, you should have seen the size of this bomb; I've never seen that much C-4 in one place. So anyway, me and Heero and like ten other guys, we're standing there looking at this thing and checking the room for the gunmen when all of a sudden we hear the door slam shut behind us and the bomb lights up with one of those little timer thingies and starts counting down –"

"Um, sir?" She interrupted quietly.

". . . and as soon as it does, like twenty guys show up out of nowhere and start shooting at us. They had to have like an AK-47 or and Uzi or something, cause you should have seen the size of the hole it left in the wall right next to my head –"

"Agent Maxwell, sir?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I, umm, I'm only have a degree in computer engineering . . . I wasn't really looking for any field work, just a desk job."

Duo sat up from his reclined position, "Well yeah, but no matter what you do here you've got to go through the academy and learn all the standard stuff. When you come out you'll be an Officer Third-Class then if you want to move up at all you've got to do _some_ field work."

The girl paled a bit, "Oh . . . well is there any thing like that I could do that doesn't involved C-4?"

Wufei rolled his eyes as the conversation continued and the girl eventually got up and left, Duo smiling and waving at her back. Wufei stood from his seat and picked up the woman's file from the table, flipped it open, and began reading. "Maxwell, you let her go?! She's probably the only competent one we've had in over an hour!"

Duo shrugged at him, "Hey man, she said she wasn't sure she'd survive the academy!"

"That doesn't matter!" He tossed the file back on the desk, "We don't have to give a damn what happens to them after today. Une's only instructions were that we had to find three potentially capable people each and run them through the evaluation course before we could leave!"

Wufei suppressed the urge to throttle Duo, "I swear to God Maxwell, I could kill you right now; I could be in my office doing actual work if it wasn't for you and Yuy's little spat with your girlfriends!"

"Okay first of all, Relena's not Heero's girlfriend. Second, this is not a spat, this is war! Nobody is going to make me sit and interview people all day and get away with it."

On the other side of the table Heero stood and walked away in the direction of the course, the woman he had been interviewing in tow. He slowed his pace a little so that she could keep up with him; which for some reason only served to irritate him more.

The cake had been one thing, it was not actually directed at him and while it probably could have been overlooked he had to make his point. He was willing to accept that the being-left-naked-in-a-locker-room-for-over-an-hour was at least partially his fault; he shouldn't have underestimated Relena's desire for revenge. This, however was where he drew the line. Forcing him to spend hours interviewing people who thought that having a pulse and evidence of brain activity qualified them for the Academy was neither practical nor a joke as far as he was concerned.

Again, he had underestimated Relena, or rather he hadn't correctly estimated her. She was getting smart about this, thinking about her opponent, learning to hit him where it would hurt the most and most of that was probably his fault for teaching her to think like this. He never had been sure if Relena was paying attention to all the things he had tried to teach her over the past two or so years; it was now obvious that she had and then some. He had created a monster. Regardless, she was still the student and he was a master of pulling off the impossible.

- - - - -

Relena threw her head back and laughed as she flipped through the pictures in front of her. "Oh Hilde, I can't believe you actually went there and took these. I'm so sorry that I missed it."

Her friend grinned, "It was priceless really, you should have seen Heero. I think he scared away almost every person that came near their table."

"And they didn't see you?"

"Relena, come on. Do you really think that they'd let me get away with a camera full of pictures of them wearing big buttons on their shirts that say 'Preventer's Open Recruitment Day: I'm hear to answer your questions'?"

Relena laughed again but then turned to Hilde to look her straight in the eye, "They're going to kill us for this you know."

- - - - -

"Well, let's see here, first we had the guy who on the driving portion you totaled every car but the one he was driving. The lady who, on the pistol range, refused to use a gun. And, oh, ha, here's my favorite, the one who on the written portion only doodled all over his test papers."

"Don't forget the woman who started crying when I asked what her age and weight were."

"Yeah, they got us huh?"

"So what are we going to do about it?"

"Huh? What do you mean we, Wufei?"

"You think I would let an injustice such as my day today slip by without punishing those directly responsible for it?"

"Whoa-oh, so we've got another teammate here, huh Heero?"

"We'll need the extra manpower. They'll be ready for us now, our future operations are going to require far more cunning and skill than we've exhibited in the past."

"I think that translates to welcome aboard."

"Justice will be served, so what's the plan?"


	6. An Above Ground Assault

Alright, and Chapter Six is two days late. I'm so sorry for the delay, apparently I was fated to be one of the first people to develop the flu this season and have been dead to the world for the past three days, (get a flu shot, I mean it, it's not worth the risk!). Again, so sorry! Well then, with all these set backs I'll not keep you waiting; thank you to all who have been reading and thank you so much for the reviews, I'm so happy everyone's enjoying this!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Six – An Above Ground Assault

Tynan

- - - - -

"Guys, are you sure about this? I mean, we haven't really had enough time to plan for everything."

"The mission is a high risk one, but it's nothing we can't handle."

"I agree with Yuy. A quick strike when they're least expecting it will obtain our objectives."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right. So, do we have everything?"

"Equipment?"

"Ladders, drills, bolts, glue, and plastic wrap."

"Infiltration gear?"

"Laptop, digital schematics, radios, rope and rigging, black attire, fake IDs, paper clip, and pocket knife."

"Let's go then."

- - - - -

Relena couldn't help but smile to herself as she got out bed. In fact while she showered and dressed the images of the great Heero Yuy sitting at a brightly colored booth with a large button on his dress uniform kept popping into her head. As she packed her briefcase for the day, she picked up several of the pictures Hilde had managed to take last night and stuffed them into her bag, just in case she should need a laugh.

She practically skipped down the stairs, considering as she went that the boys were probably planning the demise of her and Hilde at that moment, however for the time being she could relish this feeling of victory. Besides, there was no way that they could have managed to pull something off so quickly; for the time being she was safe.

"Good morning Jackie!"

The woman seated at the Peacecraft Manor's dinning room table jumped so suddenly she nearly spilt her cup of coffee. "Oh, g-good morning Miss Peacecraft." Officer Murphy stood from her seat and nodded in a sort of informal salute. Relena sighed; no matter what she insisted Jackie was always so official.

"Are you ready to go then ma'am?"

"Yes, shall we?" Jackie nodded again, lifted her coat from the back of her chair, and slipped it on, watching the Foreign Minister the whole time. Something was off with her this week; Monday she had almost been afraid to leave the house and now here she was, four days later smiling as though she didn't have a care in the world.

Jackie shrugged off the thoughts and followed Relena to where she was standing at the front door digging through her bag. "Is something wrong ma'am?"

Relena turned to face her, a huge grin on her face and several small pieces of glossy paper in her hand, "Not at all Jackie, I just have some pictures that I thought you'd like to see."

- - - - -

"Aw man, I don't think we've done anything that hard since the war. I'm beat."

"You're getting soft Maxwell. One cannot let an attack such as what we suffered yesterday slide without immediate retaliation."

"Hey, I'm not arguing with ya, Wufei. I'm just saying, I can't believe we actually pulled that off."

"We were lucky, everything went exactly according to plan."

"Heero, they're totally gonna kill us for this, you know that right?"

"I swear to God, if the two of you can't control those women and I end up dragged into another one of these–"

"Oh no you don't! Sorry man, but you helped us with this one, that means you're officially on their list."

"I don't see how they could possibly know that I was involved."

"Hey, don't worry buddy, I took care of that for you. Wanted to make sure you got the credit you deserve."

"Maxwell . . ."

- - - - -

Hilde stretched as she closed the front door behind her and began to make her way around the house she and Duo shared (well, when he wasn't being an ass anyway), and around the back to her workshop. She was falling behind on orders and repairs this week; she needed to stop being so distracted by her boyfriend's antics. But today she would have a chance to catch up a bit, she reasoned as she unlocked the door and pushed it open to step inside. There was no way the boys could have already –"

Hilde's eyes popped open in disbelief as she surveyed her workshop. How could they possible have . . . For a fleeting moment she was torn between being angry and impressed; however the former quickly won out and with a stifled scream she spun on her heals and marched back to her house to make a phone call.

- - - - -

Jackie was doing her best not to laugh. A year and a half under Agent Yuy's command had taught her one thing: It was not good to laugh at Agent Yuy. However, as she escorted the Foreign Minister to her office she really couldn't help it as she kept flipping through the pictures Relena had handed her. "I had no idea that Agent Yuy was so involved in the recruitment process."

Relena smiled in a twisted sort of way, "Well, he had a little help from me on that end."

Jackie nodded, "Who's this with him and Agent Maxwell, I think I've seen him around."

Relena leaned over Jackie's arm to look at the man she was pointing too . . . and instantly began to pale. How could she have not noticed him before? How could Hilde have missed something like this? How the hell did Wufei Chang end up at the recruitment night with Heero and Duo?!

In the short span of time it took the young Foreign Minister to reach her office Relena Peacecraft was in a full blown panic. It was one thing to be combating just Heero and Duo; those men were in charge of her security, they couldn't do anything serious to her. Wufei Chang had no such restraints, and she was very familiar with the extent of his mercy . . .

As she approached her office, Jackie had managed to catch up with her, a questioning and concerned expression on her face. But Relena did not have time to explain, she had to call Hilde as soon as she humanly could and possibly arrange for the two of them to go into hiding.

Relena breezed past Mrs. Bolling's desk, barely hearing the older woman stand from her seat and call after her. As she turned the corner and made her way down the hall towards her private office, Relena was met with an obstruction in the form of Francheska Biddle and a man wearing a maintenance uniform.

"M-miss Peacecraft, ma'am!" Francheska jumped at her boss's arrival and looked concerned about something, bur Relena did not have time at this exact moment.

"In a minute, Francheska. I need to make a phone call." Relena reached for the door and began to push it open just as Francheska spoke again.

"Y-yes ma'am, well there may be a problem with that."

Before she could even comprehend the words, Relena stepped into her office and immediately came to a screeching halt. The entire room was completely empty, right down the floor lamps and the area rugs that had covered the hard wood floors.

"I, I . . . h-how . . ." Relena stuttered as words simply would not come to her. She was vaguely aware of Francheska's arm pulling her back into the doorway and muttering something to her.

"Y-you should step back ma'am. Maintenance is on their way with ladders and some equipment. They said that it looks secure, but they don't want to take any chances."

Relena slowly turned around to face her personal assistant, "Francheska what are you talking about?"

The younger woman looked confused for a moment, "Umm, w-well your furniture ma'am."

"Yes it's all gone!"

Francheska's eyes got wide for a second before she pushed her boss about two steps into the room and forcibly tilted her head back toward the high ceilings.

Relena felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. Ignoring, Francheska's protests, she staggered a few steps into the room in a state of complete shock.

Her entire office, desk to decorative plants, was looking down at her from the ceiling. Relena continued to stare in a stupor; the larger pieces of furniture had all been fitted with open ended metal sleeves over their legs which in turn were bolted to the actual ceiling. The chairs, the plants, the lamps, the cabinets, the bookcases, the coffee table, the sofas, even the rugs, had all been attached to the top half of the room in a fashion mirroring how they had been arranged when they resided on the floor. As she continued to stare, Relena noticed that they had even gone so far as to flip her curtains upside down and suspend from the ceiling as well as fastening all of the papers that had been on her desk to it with what appeared to be saran warp.

Relena, half fell, half sat on the hard floor below her in a rather inelegant manner, "My new desk . . ." Behind her Francheska approached.

"M-miss Peacecraft, ma'am . . . maybe we should get you some coffee and –"

"My brand new desk!!!" With that Relena was back on her feet and storming out the door into the entrance area where a somewhat amused Mrs. Bolling was waiting for her.

"Edith how did this happen?!" Relena tried to keep her voice quiet and calm, but was not managing well.

Her personal secretary just raised an eyebrow, "Well that certainly is an excellent question, Miss Peacecraft. One that I don't believe we will ever no the answer to."

"And why is that?" Relena grated out.

But Mrs. Bolling was already reaching in her desk for some, presumably an answer. "Because ma'am, when the building's staff pulled up the security camera footage from last night, it had been replaced with this image for a time spanning from 1:00 in the morning to 3:45." She handed Relena an 8 ½ x 11 sized piece of paper.

Flipping it over, Relena was met with the image of Duo Maxwell, holding a camera out in front of himself, a glaring Heero Yuy, and a very determined looking Wufei Chang. The braided man had his arm around the other two and was clearly holding them in place; all three were covered in black from head to toe and loaded down with all sorts of high tech equipment, behind them the door to Relena's office was clearly visible.

Relena took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, "Mrs. Bolling –"

"I'll get Miss Schbeiker on the phone ma'am."

- - - - -

Hilde pushed her way past a group of officers coming towards her. Ordinarily they might have objected to the rudeness, but watching Agent Maxwell's girlfriend storm off in the direction of his office was not something they wanted to involve themselves it.

Hilde rounded the corner at top speed, reached her boyfriend's door, and flung it open without hesitation.

"Hey! We don't knock – Oh, Hilde." Duo's face broke out into a wide grin as he looked her up and down. "Babe, seriously I forget how hot you are when you're mad." He nudged Heero, who Hilde just notices was standing beside him, "Isn't she cute? I'm not joking babe, I could jump you right now."

"I could kill you right now!"

Duo shrugged, "My idea's more fun."

Hilde took a menacing step toward the two men, (and took a little bit of satisfaction in Duo recoiling the tiniest bit). "All of my equipment is latched to the ceiling of my garage. How the hell did you two –"

"Three."

She whipped around to face Heero, who was wearing a small, but disquieting smirk. "What?"

"There were three of us, not two."

Duo leaned back in his chair, "Yeah see when Wufei go roped into 'Open House Night' with us, well he thought that we could use a hand with out little project."

Hilde could feel her eyes get wide; Duo broke down into laughter while Heero stepped away from the wall, "You two should really have been more careful. It's not wise to involve innocent civilians in your battles."

The dark haired girl stepped back towards the door, "Fine, two or three of you it doesn't make a difference to us."

Heero shrugged in return, "You're still outnumbered, the two of you –"

He was cut off suddenly by the slamming of the office door.

- - - - -

"Relena?"

"Hilde! Wufei got pulled into –"

"I know, I was just at Duo's office. I don't know how I could have missed that he was there with them that night, he must not have been at the table the whole time. They got you too then?"

"My entire office has been attached to my ceiling. The men from maintenance say they think that they can have it all down by the end of the day . . ."

"Relena, we have to get them for this!"

"How? How can we possibly top something like this?"

"I'm thinking!"

"We're going to need some outside resources."

"Relena, you're basically one of the most powerful people on the planet. I would think you could get just about anything."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

"Hilde, in politics people have areas of expertise. When you're working on a project that exceeds your own realm of knowledge, you call in an outside source that is more well-informed on the subject than you are. Someone who can assist you and give you the necessary information to get what you need done."

"And what, you've got someone running around there who specializes in bringing pain and humiliation upon unsuspecting – gasp Relena you don't mean –"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures Hilde, and it's time to admit that we are out of our league."

"But Relena –"

"We need someone who has dedicated themselves to inflicting misery and disgrace on anyone who has ever crossed them. Someone ruthless, someone not afraid of the consequences of their actions, and personally only one name is coming to my mind."

- - - - -

The light on the phone lit up before the secretary's voice came through the speaker.

"There's a call coming in from Brussels on line two –"

"Thank you Pauline, I'll take it." Nimble fingers pressed the button and turned on the video screen, "Why Miss Relena, to what do I owe the –"

"There isn't much time to explain, so I'll get right to the point. I need your help with something."

"Why of course, anything I can do. However, I'm not sure how helpful I could be in the realm of politics."

"This isn't politics, this is revenge."

"Revenge you say Miss Relena? Well then certainly count me in." A delighted smile broke out across Dorothy Catalonia's face, "So what's the plan?"


	7. A Mobile Strike

Okay, I'm back. So sorry for falling behind, I've been absolutely drowning in school work and I had to get the next chapter of Occam's Razor finished, (it's up now!). Anyway, hopefully I'll be back on track now. Alright, on to the story! I will admit that I went a little overboard with Dorothy in some parts, but I just couldn't resist and I loved every second of it . . . hope you do too. Enjoy!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Seven – A Mobile Strike

Tynan

- - - - -

"The problem is that the two of you are being too kind about this whole affair."

"We are no –"

"First you locked them up, while naked, in an office and a locker room. While your intentions were admirable, you still gave them the benefit of privacy whilst they worked through their dilemma."

"Yes and then we –"

"Second, you forced them to attend a Recruitment Night on behalf of Preventers, and while this did serve to bring their humiliation out into the public eye, they did not have to find a way to work themselves out of their predicament, they just had to wait for it to be over."

"So what you're saying is that we need to put them in a publicly embarrassing situation that they need to find a way to remedy on their own."

"That is exactly what I am saying. This, ladies, is war. It is not enough simply to defeat your opponent. No, you must crave his demise with all your being, you must make it so that you cannot stand that he lives on unpunished for the pain he had inflicted upon you, and you must want to kill him just to watch him die."

". . . Relena, Dorothy's kind of scaring me."

"Do not fear battle nor the consequences of it, that will be your undoing."

"We understand Dorothy. Now to comply with the stipulations you have laid out, we'll need to make our next move while they are at work. It's Friday now, which means that we have two days to plan for this."

"Two days is more than we will need."

- - - - -

Monday morning. As far as Duo was concerned there should be some sort of law against these things. Monday was simply an awful way to spend one seventh of your life with no way around it. But today was different. This day, this Monday brought promises of potential calamity with it.

He downed what had to be his at least his seventh cup of coffee as he made his way to Heero's office; pausing before every corner, every open doorway, just to be sure, before continuing. His hands were shaking the tiniest bit, probably from all the caffeine, as he raised one to knock on the door of his best friend's office.

A voice came from the other side, "What Duo?" and he took that as an invitation to enter.

He stuck his head in cautiously, as through expecting to be attacked; his action did not go unnoticed.

"I haven't seen Relena at all today, Duo."

The braided man slapped a hand to his forehead, "What?! Heero, how could you –"

Heero looked up from his laptop, "Why are you –"

"Because," he practically shouted back, "three days ago we glued all of their furniture to the ceiling of their offices and they've had a whole weekend to plan how to get back at us!"

Heero nodded.

Duo growled in frustration at the nonchalant attitude of his friend, "And for the love of God, you're team is supposed to be keeping an eye on her movements –"

"And yours is supposed to be keeping an eye on her at her home." Heero cut him off.

"Y-yeah . . . but they haven't seen anything suspicious, I asked them."

Heero shrugged at him, "My team hasn't either." Duo lifted his head in a startled sort of way to look at Heero, who continued speaking, "Which is why I'm not that concerned at his moment."

Duo leaned back against the wall behind him, "Well, don't you think that we should, ya know, be ready for them and all?"

Heero closed his laptop and stood from his seat, "I won't make the mistake of underestimating Relena and Hilde again, however, one thing they are not is subtle, especially Relena. There aren't many places that both she and the two of us can go where she wouldn't be recognized instantly and Hilde couldn't pull something off like what they've been doing all by herself. Aside from that, Relena is under the constant watch of either my team or yours."

"And they'd tell you if she was doing anything weird or something?"

The Japanese man stopped to look at him, "Aren't yours doing the same?"

"Well, yeah but –"

"Then for now, don't worry. We have work to do." He checked his watch, "And a meeting to attend."

Duo sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets, "Who the hell called this one anyway? I just got in today and the secretary had a message for us to be at Building C at 9:00."

"The heads of Security and Intelligence are meeting with Une and the Prime Minister's staff to go over arrangements for his trip next month." Heero paused to open his desk drawer and remove some folders.

Duo looked at him with a confused expression, "I thought that meeting was next week."

"They moved it up apparently, which is another reason I'm not concerned about Relena."

"Huh?"

Heero looked up with a small smirk on his face, "She's going to be stuck in this meeting all day with us."

- - - - -

"I have to say Miss Relena, I am impressed; a pure stroke of genius."

"Well, it's not as through the Prime Minister's staff can refuse the request of the Foreign Minster. I made sure to make it very clear to them that today was going to be the only day for the next month that I could block out at least five hours for them. That will be enough time Hilde?"

"As long as Wufei doesn't come back early; I'm going to do Heero and Duo's first then him. You're sure he'll be gone all afternoon?"

"Oh after the little mess I've stirred up for him there's no way that Agent Chang will be getting anywhere near his office until at least four o'clock."

"That's cutting it a little close Dorothy, but I think we'll be able to manage."

"These men you hired Dorothy, we can trust them?"

"Of course, one of them works for me personally; I assure you that he is quite skilled."

"Alright then, best of luck you two. I have a meeting to get to."

- - - - -

Officer Second-Class William Cummings was doing everything in his power to stay alert as possible. It was his week for escorting Foreign Minister Relena Peacecraft and Agent Yuy had given his specific instructions to keep an eye out for any suspicious behavior from her and report it him immediately. But frankly, he just couldn't understand what Agent Yuy had been talking about.

As best he could tell the Foreign Minister was in her usual pleasant, if not somewhat harried mood. She smiled congenially to his as they made their way towards her 9:00 meeting.

Yes, as far as he could tell, nothing was wrong.

- - - - -

"Excuse me ma'am."

One of the five receptionists that staffed the reception desk on the first floor of Preventer's Head Quarters Building A, looked up from the magazine she had snuck a moment to read. Flustered by being caught off guard, she quickly stuffed it into a drawer and looked up to the short, dark-haired girl before her. "Y-yes can I help you?"

The young woman smiled, behind her were two very large burly men; all three of them were wearing the same khaki colored work suits, each of the two men had heavy looking tool belts wrapped around their waists. "Yes ma'am, I was hoping that you could direct me to the freight elevator, I have several large pieces of equipment that are going up to the 38th floor."

"One moment please," she scanned her the list of scheduled deliveries for the day that sat on her desk, easily finding one listed for the 38th floor, "Ah yes, Security and Intelligence, Agents Maxwell and Yuy?"

"Yes ma'am, and we also have a shipment for an . . ." she pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and skimmed it, "Agent Chang?"

"Oh yes, Special Operations, the 26th floor." She leaned over her desk to point to the outside, "If you'll just take your vehicle around to the back of the building you'll find the loading docks and access to the freight elevator."

The young woman smiled at her, for some reason the smile made her uncomfortable, "Thank you for your help, enjoy your day."

- - - - -

Wufei Chang was not in a good mood; this was more than apparent to George Morganthau as he followed the man down the hall. As Agent Chang's intern, it fell to George to try and make his life easier . . . but this task, no this was something only a seasoned agent like Wufei Chang could handle.

George tried not to shudder as they returned to the room he had just left not ten minutes ago. "A-agent Chang, I-I'm very sorry for all this sir, I j-just . . . well, I couldn't –"

"It's fine Morganthau . . . you are dealing with a formidable opponent."

George tried not to look confused, "O-opponent sir? It's just a meeting with –"

But Wufei did not hear him as his hand closed around the door knob and the offending piece of wood was flung open. He stepped inside the room and rounded on its occupant, "Dorothy Catalonia."

- - - - -

It was quiet for a Monday . . . well in a sense anyway. With all of the department heads in Building C for their meeting, there wasn't much to do. This should have given Jackie the chance to catch up on her paperwork from last week before Agent Yuy returned.

However, there were currently a series of very strange noises coming from his office, which she found highly distracting. About an hour ago, several people in work uniforms had carried or carted dozens of boxes of all shapes and sizes into the office, and were piling them up empty outside the door.

A loud crash caused her to spill some of her coffee on what she was reading. Jackie stood from her seat, intent on giving whoever the hell was in there a piece of her mind. Work order or not, this was still an office and –"

The office door suddenly opened and two men and smaller woman emerged. As they marched off in the direction of Agent Maxwell's office, Jackie couldn't help but notice the smell of gasoline wafting after them.

- - - - -

"Dorothy, this is absurd. What could you possibly need this much heavy equipment and man power for?"

"Well Agent Chang, I would certainly love to divulge that information, but I fear that it is considered classified by your organization."

"I know that! I'm the one who classified it!!! You can't come to Special Operations, demanding the assistance of Preventers and not present a logical and acceptable reason for the requisition. I don't care what your company is willing to pay for the outside contract, you have to tell me what you'll be us for!"

". . . I think that I'm going to need something in writing stating that you have the proper clearance to possess this information."

"Arrrrghhhh . . ."

- - - - -

Heero was in full blown panic mode, behind him Duo jogged to keep up. What exactly she had done he couldn't be quite sure yet. Duo had sensed it too and they had bolted across the compound, back to their offices to try and determine what had happened as soon as the meeting was over. Several attempts to contact Wufei were made but met only with his voicemail.

The two men blew through the lobby and to the elevators, ignoring the receptionist's attempts to get their attention. Heero stood perfectly still while Duo paced the elevator like a caged animal, "You don't think she – no, where would you even get that much jello . . ."

With a ding, the metal doors slid open and the vessel's two occupants emerged, making a beeline for Heero's office. "I'll call my team, you get yours together, find out if any one's been –"

"Agent Yuy!"

Heero spun on his heels, but managed to stop himself for reaching for his gun as Jackie Murphy emerged from around the corner . . . just the person he wanted to see. "Officer Murphy," she fell into step behind him as they approached his office, "assemble the team, they are to be in my – ooof."

For a moment Duo and Jackie did not move. Neither could be sure exactly what had happened; Heero had gone to open his door, there had been a banging noise, and he had been knocked to the floor. They locked eyes for a moment, not sure what to do, but as Heero got to his feet their attention was drawn back to the door.

"What the hell . . ." Heero pushed on the already slightly ajar door gently. It opened another few inches but came to an abrupt stop again, as though something very large was blocking it.

Jackie took a hesitant step towards her commander, "Umm, Agent Yuy, I –"

"Hold this, I'm going in." he cut her off as he slid off his jacket and holster and handed them to Jackie, a bewildered looking Duo standing beside her.

"Dude, are you even going to fit through there?"

But no sooner had he spoken the words than Heero had managed to squeeze himself through the fourteen or so inch gap. His foot caught on the edge of the door, causing him to trip, but was able to stabilize himself by grabbing hold of –

Heero stood against the wall, gaping in disbelief at the scene before him. He was only brought out of his stupor by Duo wedging himself through the gap as well.

"All clear then? Man, I keep forgetting how skinny you are, that's a tiny little –" His voice failed him, "How the hell did they . . ."

- - - - -

Wufei grumbled as he marched back down the hall towards his office. That woman was exactly what was wrong with the human race. Behind him George was scuttling to keep up as they approached his office, but at this point he didn't care; it was quarter to five and all he wanted was to go home and –"

Wufei's head connected painfully with his office door as it opened halfway and refused to go any farther; at the same time some sort of alarm began to go off, loud blaring noises filled the air as people looked out of their offices to see what the commotion was. Wufei glanced around for a minute before realizing the sound was not that of a usual alarm, although it still sounded familiar somehow . . .

Dread filled his stomach as he finally was able to place the sound; he managed to poke his around the half opened door and into his office, confirming his suspicions. Somewhere through all the racket he heard George come up behind him; the younger man gasped upon sighting the source of the commotion as well.

"A-agent Chang . . . i-is that your car?"

- - - - -

"Cheers!"

The clinking of glass was followed by the twinkling laughter of the three women seated on a thick blanket in the middle of the park-like area that sat between the four buildings that comprised the Preventer's Bureau World Head Quarters Compound. They were not phased by the curious looks from those walking by, they seemed too engrossed in their little picnic and spectacle before them.

"Oh look, they got another crane!"

"Hmm, I think that that one will probably be tall enough."

"That's what you said about the last one."

"Well now Dorothy, they did manage to get Wufei's car out with that one."

"Yes, but does this one really look like it can go eleven stories higher?"

"It looks like they're going for it, so I guess we'll find out."

"-sigh- If only they worked on the 50th floor, this could be so much more entertaining."

"We're in enough trouble as it is, Hilde. You know how they are about their cars."

"And rightfully so, I'm telling ya girls. You've got to see what Heero's got under the hood of that thing, I almost felt bad having to take it apart in the garage and put it back together in such a tight space."

"I really do hope that none of them are damaged, they really are fond of them."

"Which is exactly the reason this ploy worked so smoothly; they were so easy to distract."

"Tell me, how did you keep manage Wufei in a meeting for two hours?"

"Now now, Miss Relena, Agent Chang and I had a very pleasant discussion –"

"Oh hey, look I think they've got Heero's car!"

All three applauded politely and continued to sip their wine.

- - - - -

"What? They've got Wicked Brows with them now too?"

"It's too great a coincidence. What are the odds of her showing up today to keep me in a meeting and out of my office for hours?"

"I agree . . . clever Relena, very clever."

"Aw man, with Cat involved this gets taken to a whole new level now."

"Which is why we need to form a new alliance of our own."

"What?"

"Our new enemy possess a different kind of cunning and skill, one that brings a new element to the dynamic of their team. It is essential that we gather the information we will need in order to prepare for our next attack."

"Heero, be serious. Who do you think is going to know anything about big bad . . . oooooh. Oh, yes I see."

"Do you think that he'll help us?"

"We'll have to be careful, obtain the information covertly."

"Yes, I agree. So what's the plan?"

-

-

-

I don't know why but I just see the guys being really into their cars now that they don't have Gundams to be playing around with anymore. ;) Thanks for reading, be back soon!


	8. Elevated Threat Level

Whew, okay here's chapter eight! I'm so sorry that these are taking so long to get posted, I'm in the middle of that end of the semester crunch time . . . I might kill myself actually. For those of you reading Occam's Razor, I'll hopefully get the next chapter up in the next week. Thank you for the reviews guys, I'm so happy that people are actually finding this funny. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Eight – Elevated Threat Level

Tynan

- - - - -

"It's agreed then, Duo will work recon in order to gain the information we require."

"I still don't think that he's going to help us."

"Idiot, of course he won't if he knows what we're doing!"

"You have to be sneaky about this, Duo –"

"Hey! I think everyone's forgotten who they're talking to here!"

"We haven't, and while you're talking to him, don't _you_ forget watching the men with the crane lift your car out of your office window."

"Hey man, that's all the motivation I need."

- - - - -

"Oh I wish I could have seen their faces." Hilde chuckled to herself as she rolled up the blanket they had been sitting on. It was well after sunset now, but that was how long it took to get all three of the boys' cars out of their offices.

Dorothy smiled, "With that building I'm sure there's a security camera around there somewhere that we could get pictures from."

"So . . . what do you think they're going to do to us in return?"

"Miss Relena, if those boys have any sense they'll realize that they simply cannot win here and give up."

Relena rolled her eyes, "Dorothy, you know as well as I do that they are probably plotting as we speak."

"Well personally, I think that they should just be grateful that we put the cars back together at all." Hilde stood up wearing a grin that could rival her boyfriend's, "I even changed the oil and everything."

"Hilde, I mean it. We messed with their cars, you of all people should know how protective Duo is of that thing."

"Yeah yeah, you're right. But look, if they're going to get us, let's face it, there's not going to be much that we can do about it."

"Well," Dorothy flung her long hair over her shoulder, "I don't know about you ladies, but all I have to say on that subject is that if they dare try anything, I will make them sorry that they were ever born."

The other two nodded in resolute agreement.

- - - - - -

Quatre looked up from the proposal he was reading at the sound of the vid-phone ringing, more specifically his private line. Only a few people had this number, which meant that is was more than likely one of his friends on the other line; the blonde man smiled to himself, after the past week he could do with seeing a friendly face.

He set down the papers and picked up the phone; Duo's cheerful face appeared on the screen.

"Hey Quat!"

"Duo," Quatre smiled at the braided man, "how are you?"

"I'm good, man, I'm doing good. Hey look, I'm sorry to just call like this, but well, I was hoping you could help me with something."

A knowing sense of apprehension filled Quatre's stomach, but he managed to keep a pleasant look on his face, "O-of course, Duo. What can I do for you?"

"Well . . . this is kind of embarrassing." He stopped to scratch his head, "See . . . well Dorothy's in town –"

"Yes, I heard that she went to Brussels to see Relena for a few days."

"Yeah . . . see, Hilde and Relena thought that we should all go out to lunch together," Duo suddenly looked very, almost sheepish, "and well, you know Dorothy and I never really got along."

"Yes, I remember." Quatre answered dryly, trying to repress the images of Dorothy and Duo's last encounter.

"So anyway, Hilde told me that, well she's gone through all this trouble to set this whole thing up and . . ." he sighed, "Look Quat, you're the only one I know who know anything about the girl so umm . . . could you . . ."

"Tell you a little about Dorothy?" Quatre felt a wave of relief wash over his body, pleased to see that Duo was taking an interest in getting to know his their mutual (sort of) friend.

"Well, I'm not saying I need to know everything about her. Just, you know, what she likes, doesn't like, hobbies, any weaknesses she might have."

Quatre did a double take, "What?"

Duo sputtered for a second, "Y-yeah, you know like allergies or something." His friend laughed nervously, "W-wouldn't want to take her to the wrong restaurant or something, she'd never let me hear the end of it."

The blonde man relaxed a bit, "Oh well to be honest with you Dorothy is a very cultured and worldly individual."

Duo face fell for a moment as he replies dryly, "You don't say."

"Yes, so you really could take her just about anywhere you'd like, as long as the restaurant's on the ground."

And he immediately perked up, "On the ground?"

"Well, I suppose a few stories up would be okay, but not much higher. You see, Miss Dorothy is deathly afraid of heights."

- - - - -

Relena couldn't help but feel apprehensive as she dialed Dorothy's number; it had been four days and there had been no retaliation from the boys. Dorothy had insisted that they had simply realized they were outmatched; regardless, she had planned to stay for a week on the off chance that their victims attempted retaliation. All had been quiet so far . . . but as far as Relena was concerned, she knew it was only a matter time.

She heard the phone click as the other end was picked up and Dorothy's face appeared on the screen. "Why Miss Relena, not backing out on me tonight are you?"

Relena forced a smile, "No, of course not. It's just –"

"You're still worried about the boys."

"Dorothy, don't make fun of me for this. We're talking about Mr. Perfect, the King of Pranks, and Minister of Justice. The three of them are like some sort of team of –"

"Superhero prankers?" Dorothy tried to suppress a chuckle.

"Dorothy this isn't funny!"

But the other woman was still snickering under her breath, "Yes, Miss Relena, it is. You need to relax, this whole situation has gotten you very worked up, it's not good for your health, dear." Relena pouted as Dorothy continued, "Now, I got us a table for 8:00, a private room and everything so that we can have a nice, quiet, girl's night out."

Relena couldn't help but smile a little bit, Georgina's was after all her favorite restaurant, "I still think that we need to be careful."

Dorothy rolled her eyes, "Miss Relena, if it will make you feel any better think of it this way: Those boys couldn't possibly come up with anything that would do me any harm, and if they can't get all of us, they won't bother."

"I wouldn't be so confident, Dorothy. They're very resourceful when they have to be."

"Oh stop it, you know good and well that they hardly know a thing about me, and it's not as if they have some sort of 'Dorothy Dictionary' or inside source at their . . ."

Relena watched as Dorothy's gaze slowly drifted to her desk in a thoughtful manner, "Is something wrong?"

Dorothy immediately lifted her head, "Oh no, dear. It's nothing, I've just . . . well I've just remember I have to make a phone call before tonight. I'll see you and Hilde at 8:00 then?"

Relena nodded and the line was abruptly terminated.

- - - - - -

Three figures sat hunched over a large table perched in the corner of a dimly lit kitchen. The table was covered with blue prints, schematics, tools, and the occasional weapon. Tacked to the wall next to the table was a chart with three different colored lines, each corresponding to various times and locations. One of the men stood and gestured to the chart.

"Everyone understands the mission parameters then?"

"Heero, man don't worry, we got this." Duo reclined in his chair nonchalantly, much to the annoyance of Wufei.

"An attitude like that is exactly what is going to screw up this mission, Maxwell! This is one of the most complicated and sensitive operations we've ever attempted, everything must go exactly according to plan, you know what's at stake should something go awry."

Heero nodded, "We were fortunate that the three of them are having dinner together tonight; our objectives will be far easier to obtain if they're all in the same location."

"What time was their reservation for?"

"Eight o'clock. We should head out."

"Yeah, yeah." Duo stood from his seat and grabbed one of the three bags on the floor, swinging it over his shoulders, "Well let's get to it th –" He stopped short at the sound of his phone ringing, "Hey one sec guys."

Duo took a step away from the table, and flipped open his phone as Heero mutter for him to make it quick.

"Duo?" Quatre's quiet voice emanated from the other side.

"Hey man, how's it –"

"Don't 'How's-it-going-Quatre me, Duo! I just got off the phone with Dorothy!" Quatre sounded vaguely angry, a tone Duo was not used to, but he stood his ground.

"Ya did huh?"

"Yes, and the first thing she asked me was if I had talked to you recently."

"And what did you say?"

"What do you think I said?! I told her that I hadn't heard from you in several weeks! Do I look insane?!" The man on the other end of the phone suddenly seemed desperate, and slightly terrified. Duo couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him.

"Heh, well . . ."

"Duo, I don't know what's going on, but whatever you're planning call it off." Quatre pleaded. "You don't know what you're dealing with here! The woman is smart with nearly unlimited resources and almost no compassion for those who have wronged her. She will kill all of you before you even have a chance to breathe . . . if you're lucky."

After listening to miniature tirade, Duo could help but feel the tiniest bit nervous, but he pushed the thought out of his mind. "Quat, come on, it's me, Heero, and Wufei. I think the three of us can handle her."

"Duo, I'm begging you, please reconsider."

"Sorry man, but this war."

Silence enveloped the other side of the conversation.

"Quat, you there?"

"Duo?"

"Yeah buddy?"

"Please don't tell Dorothy I had something to do with this."

"Hey, no promises, but I'll try."

Quatre sighed, "Fine, but could you do me a favor before you guys start this little plan?"

"Sure thing buddy, what'd ya need?"

"Yours, Heero's, and Wufei's exact heights."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to have to pick out coffins for the three of you."

- - - - -

Remmy Goustou, paused to look up from his work. The executive chef of Georgina's scanned his kitchen in a curious way. Something seemed off here, but for the life of him he could not determine what it was. It was a Friday night, the five star restaurant was packed as usual, but on top of this the corporate giant Dorothy Catalonia _and_ the Foreign Minister had chosen tonight to take up positions at the chef's table.

As usual the kitchen was bustling with activity, waiters, sous chef, and assistants were dashing about the calculated chaos . . . however, he just could not shake the feeling he had seen someone that he didn't recognize for just a fraction of a second . . . a young man in a waiter's outfit with a long braid trailing behind him.

Pushing the thought out of his mind as turned back to the meals he had personally crafted for tonight's honored guests, but paused as he glanced down at them and realized that one of his many assistants had already sprinkled the dished with cayenne pepper. Remmy smiled to himself and swelling with pride that his staff was always so on top of things as he lifted the dishes onto the pickup shelf and tapped the bell.

- - - - -

Relena sighed as a cool breeze tickled the side of her face. Light was streaming in all around her, prodding her to wake, calling her name.

"Relena . . ."

She rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head, hoping to drown out the voice for just five more minutes, but it persisted.

"Reh-leen-ah . . ."

The breeze continued, swirling her hair around her head, lolling her back to sleep, the voice seemed to have vanis –"

"Damn it, Relena wake up!" Something hit her in the side of her head and Relena snapped out of her daze, sitting bolt upright in her bed . . . and almost immediately stopped breathing.

Sprawled out before her was the most breath-taking view of Brussels anyone could possibly imagine . . . actually they wouldn't have to imagine it if they were –

"Wha - . . . Where are we?" She almost begged of her two friends, both of whom she had just noticed were perched a top their own beds, which were lined up next to hers.

"Where the hell do you think we are?! We're on top of the World Finance Building!" Dorothy snapped at her. Despite losing her usual cool, Relena also couldn't help but notice that the blonde woman also looked a little pale. She was also clutching one of the craved wood bedposts as her long hair was whipped around her face.

Relena was at a complete loss as she turned back to survey the vast expanse before her. Her mid reeled as she thought back to the previous night. Dinner had been exceptional, her meal was perfect, the wine selection impeccable, the desert was to die for. She, Dorothy, and Hilde had wasted away hours with pleasant conversation and perhaps a little too much alcohol . . . she had begun to feel tired as they left, well after mid-night. In fact, now that she though about it, she never remembered reaching her home last, instead falling asleep in the car –

Realization struck Relena, "They drugged us!"

Hilde let out a soft sigh, before sarcastically responding, "I'm so glad you're leading the free world, Relena. That would have been really hard to figure out."

Relena ignored the comment. She had to give the boys credit for this one, they had thought this out and executed it perfectly, going so far as to bring their own beds to the top of the building. Relena turned back to where Dorothy was beginning to look a bit ill. "Dorothy, are you alright?"

Her blonde hair swirled around her beautiful, but pale, face as she looked up to meet Relena's gaze, fire blazing in her eyes.

"I am going to kill Quatre."

- - - - -

Duo sat up in his lounge chair, setting his plate aside and bringing the binoculars he was holding up to his face. "Oh hey guys, they're waking up!"

Heero and Wufei appeared instantly as his side, each with their own binoculars. Heero checked his watch, "It's 10:30, they were out a lot longer than we thought they would be."

Duo shrugged a bit and picked up his bacon and egg sandwich as Heero went back to the grill they had set up, "Sorry about that, guess I went a bit over board with the stuff. Where'd you get that anyway, Wufei?"

The Chinese man set down his binoculars and returned to his own lounge chair and breakfast, "Sally's lab. She may have gotten a bit suspicious about I was asking about all the pills and things in their, but she'll forget about it."

"Yeah, it must have really done a number on them, because they certainly didn't notice you were the one driving their car."

Heero took a seat next to Duo, his hot-off-the-grill breakfast in hand, and looked over the edge of the skyscraper whose roof they were currently perched on. Behind them the small grill had begun to cool next to a table that was now laden with cracked egg shell, empty containers of bacon and ham, several bags of bakery fresh rolls, and a couple cartons of orange juice. "Shame that this building isn't close, but I suppose this is the best we could do if we wanted to be eye level with them."

Duo leaned back in his chair, "Hey man, I'm not complaining, this is one hell of a relaxing way to start your day." He downed his second sandwich, as he turned to his friend, "Heero, man, I had no idea you could cook."

"Bacon and eggs are hardly gourmet, Maxwell."

But Duo was not listening to Wufei as he picked up his binoculars again, "Ha! Look at Dorothy! She's holding on to the side of bed, ha – Oh, she just threw a pillow at Relena, looks like she's getting mad!"

The three men laughed and continued with their breakfast.

- - - - - -

"Dorothy, are you sure that you're alright? You look very pale still."

"I'm fine, Miss Relena. That sedative is starting to work."

"We're lucky that Sally was in her lab this morning."

"Doesn't that woman have anything better to do on a Saturday?"

"She said she was doing inventory . . ."

"You don't think that Wufei . . ."

"So it would seem."

"Hmm, we could use to our advantage."

"Dorothy, I don't know how we're possibly going to –"

"Oh not you too Hilde! Don't you dare give me that defeatist attitude! This whole operation has become something more than just pulling practical jokes on one another, this is psychological warfare now!"

"And by that you mean?"

"They drugged us and put us on top of that roof just to show us that they could! They want us to see how defenseless and incapable we are compared to them, they did this just so we could see what they can do!"

" . . . So then, we have to show them what we're capable of."

"Exactly. And we have to consider Mr. Winner an enemy as well now."

"Agreed. So, what's the plan?"


	9. Close Range Warfare

Alright, so I did not in fact fall off the face of the planet, (though I really would have liked to). I am so very sorry for taking so long with this chapter, my entire life was completely consumed with papers by the end of the semester and left me absolutely no time to write, but I'm back on track now and cranking out as much as I can over the break for this, Occam's Razor, and some new stuff I'm starting work on, (so watch for me!) Thank you again for the reviews and for reading, this chapter is a bit longer than the others, but hopefully just as funny.

Two quick things. One: For those not reading Occam's Razor, Francheska Biddle is Relena's personal assistant; she is serving in this role as her Parliamentary Internship during her time at the University of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation where she is majoring in Government and Political Affairs and Computer Programming. She was accepted to the University a year early due to her incredible skill with computers.

Second: Make sure you read my note at the very end!

Enjoy!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Nine – Close Range Warfare

Tynan

- - - - -

"I was wondering why he was suddenly so interested in all the drugs we had in the lab. He really put that in your food?"

"He must have Sally, it's the only explanation that we can come up with."

"Unbelievable. Boy, does that guy have balls . . . and I want them in a jar on my desk."

"You're in then?"

"Of course I'm in, Hilde! Do you really think that I'd let them get away with breaking into my lab to steal things and using them to drug my friends?"

"Oh, that's so sweet of you Sally."

"Sally, we're going to need the access you have to Preventers in order to accomplish this."

"You guys have a plan already then?"

"Yes . . . well once I convince Francheska to commit a federal offense we will."

- - - - -

Quatre nodded automatically to the chauffeur as he held the black limo's door open and climbed inside. Ordinarily he would have taken the time to relish in the fresh air and beautiful scenery of Brussels, but for the time being his mind was consumed by far more pressing issues.

Duo had sent him the pictures of what they had done to the girls . . . and there was no way that Dorothy didn't at the very least suspect that he had had a hand in this; damage control was a must. She had not been returning his phone calls and a combination of guilt and fear had driven him to arrange a business trip to Earth in order to try and locate Dorothy to plead for mercy in person.

- - - - -

Relena looked at Dorothy in a state of total shock, "He actually came to Earth of his own free will knowing that you're plotting his slow and painful death?"

Dorothy nodded to her from her seat opposite Relena's desk, "If nothing else he deserves points for bravery."

"There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity." Sally quipped from her perch next to the window as she grinned in a twisted way, "He's certainly made things easier for us, that's for sure."

Relena shook her head, "I'm not sure that I'm comfortable doing something like this to Quatre," she turned to Dorothy, an imploring look in her eyes, "Really Dorothy, it wasn't his fault, I'm sure he never would have helped the boys if he knew what they were up to."

"That doesn't matter!" the blonde woman snapped, "What matters is that he did and now he must face the consequences."

Hilde raised her hands as if she were surrendering, "Hey, no problems on this end." Sally nodded in agreement.

"Excellent." she turned back to Relena, "Now then, if you will have Miss Biddle join us, I believe it's time for us to get started."

Relena let a small sigh escape her lips as she began to page Francheska over the intercom. Behind her, Sally removed her palm pilot from her back pocket and began paging through it, "Alright, Wufei's in a meeting with Une this afternoon, but he'll be at the Academy until then so he probably won't notice until it's too late."

Hilde nodded, "And Duo and Heero have their weekly meeting with their teams all afternoon, they won't be back in their offices until at least 3:00."

"As for our dear Mr. Winner," Dorothy purred, "we don't need to worry about when he is or isn't out of his office, so we can get to him whenever it is convenient."

Just as Dorothy finished her sentence there was a knock on the door of Relena's office and the tiny figure of Francheska Biddle entered, "You wanted to see me Miss Relena?"

Relena smiled at the young woman pleasantly, "Yes Francheska, you see my friends and I are having a little problem here that we need your help with."

- - - - -

Duo cautiously peaked his head around the corner, but was almost knocked over as Heero pushed past him. "Duo, they're not hiding here waiting for you."

The braided man righted himself then quickly caught up to his friend, "Hey man, you can be all reckless and stuff if you want but I'm telling you, when we least expect it, BAM!" he smacked his hands together for emphasis, "that's when it's going to happen."

Heero shook his head as they approached the conference room where their teams were waiting for them, "I think you can consider yourself safe for the next few hours. Somehow I doubt that the girls have managed to brainwash one of your subordinates into attacking you when you walk through that door."

Duo's eyes got wide for a moment, possibly due to the fact that Heero had (kind of) just made a joke, "I'm just saying, I wouldn't put anything past them."

- - - - -

"Miss Peacecraft, are you sure that this alright, ma'am?"

"Francheska, we have Sally's clearance level, she's allowed access to all of this information."

"She's allowed access to all of these passwords?"

"How did you –"

"That is what you're after right? Agent Yuy and Maxwell's passwords?"

"And Agent Chang's."

"Wow Relena, you were right, this girl is good."

"How did you know that we were after their passwords, Francheska?"

"You asked me to log into their department's server, locate their static IPs, and find what the key sequence of the first command they typed into their units were after the computers were turned on; that would be their passwords."

"Yes well . . ."

"You're lucky that they happened to leave their computers on in standby mode while still plugged into the Preventers mainframe while they're at work or I wouldn't have been able to pull up this information. I've got to say that Agent Yuy's was particularly difficult, he seems to have some sort of a program that encrypts whatever he types so that the actual sequence of keys can't be immediately determined."

"But you figured it out."

"Yeah . . . it think so anyway, it should be one of those three that I wrote down, you'll have to try them all and see what works. I also routed this computer so that it located the other IP address that had that e-mail account you requested Miss Catalonia; you were right, Agent Maxwell's computer did have a link to it in his address book."

"I must say Miss Biddle, I'm impressed."

"Thank you Miss Catalonia, but this kind of stuff is actually really easy if you already have access to the mainframe."

". . . yeah it looks like a piece of cake."

"So . . . would all of this have anything to do with that day your desk drawers were glued shut and then all of your office furniture being attached to your ceiling, Miss Peacecraft?"

"Do you really want the answer to that, Francheska?"

"Right. Wasn't here, didn't see it, couldn't have stopped you."

- - - - -

Ahmed looked up from the paperwork before him at the sound of his computer beeping to notify him that there was a new e-mail message waiting for him. Beside him Abdul's computer had emitted the same noise and the other man was already clicking the window open in order to read it, "Hey, it's from Master Quatre on Earth!"

Ahmed smiled to himself, reasoning that the entire Magunac Corps had received the same message; it was so kind of their young master to check in with them while he was away on business. As he opened the message he did not even hear the startled gasp that came from the man next to him.

However, he immediately emitted his own as his eyes came to rest on the contents of the e-mail from their beloved master.

- - - - -

Wufei set his cup of coffee down on the table and removed his laptop from its case, pressing the power button and waiting for it to boot up. He glanced down at his watch; Commander Une would be arriving for their meeting in a few minutes, leaving him enough time to set up the presentation of the plans he had spent months crafting.

Ducking under the table he found the necessary cables and began plugging them into the back of his computer; from the affirmative beeping sounds now emanating from it he knew that the images on the laptop's screen were now being displayed on the larger projection screen behind him without even having to look. No sooner had he finished and stood up than the small conference room's door opened and the Commander entered.

Wufei couldn't help but smile to himself, proud of his work and pleased to finally be presenting it to his Commander; he was certain she would take his recommendations and all him the leeway his was asking for.

However, this notion was suddenly less certain as his eyes came to rest upon her face and confused and horrified expression that it bore. Her eyes were going back and forth between him and the screen behind him, leaving Wufei very confused. She hadn't even seen his presentation yet, how could she be reacting like this?

Carefully, he took a step toward her, "Commander, is there something wrong?"

If it was possible her eyes grew even wider as she turned her body to face him, her voice sounding almost strangled as she finally spoke, "I-is there . . . Is this some sort of a sick joke, Chang?!"

Wufei felt himself unconsciously take a step back gripped by bewilderment as to what the cause of her outburst might be. "Commander . . ."

But before he could utter another word she had closed the distance between them and placed a hand on either side of his head, forcing it to turn around and look behind him . . . and immediately caused the blood to drain from his face and his voice to falter as he looked at the image being projected from his laptop and onto the screen.

- - - - -

"Okay, but what I'm saying is that it's been like five days since we left them on top of that roof and they still haven't tried to get us back yet."

"Hn." Heero rolled his eyes and continued down the hallway in the direction of his and Duo's offices after leaving their meeting, his braided friend in step beside him, ranting about their war with the girls. Duo had been becoming increasingly paranoid over the last five days apparently under the impression that Dorothy might be waiting around any given corner with either a sniper riffle or a cream pie with his name on it. On some level, Heero could sympathize; he knew that they really had ticked the girls off, but at the same time as Duo pointed out it had been five days without any sort of retaliation.

"I mean what could they possibly be planning to do to us that they need this long for?" The braided Preventers agent sounded beside himself, as though this situation was one of complete hopelessness that would surely result in the end of his life.

Heero took a sip of the coffee he was holding as they continued to walk. "Duo, don't you think that it's possible that they've just given up?" But even as the words left his mouth he realized that he didn't even believe them.

"Well how would we know?!" Duo practically yelled as they came up on Heero's office (Duo apparently planned to follow him in as usual), "Unless that's part of their plan; to drive us crazy waiting for an attack that's never going to come!" Without warning he seized Heero by the shoulders, a crazed and desperate look on his face, "What if this never ends?! What if Hilde never speaks to me again?! What if I can't ever go home and I'm stuck at your place for the rest of my life."

Heero couldn't stop his eyes from widening at the prospect of having Duo as a permanent roommate; it was one thing for his friend to sleep on his couch for a bit while they waited for the hostile situation at his usual residence to subside, however . . . "Duo, it will be fine."

The Japanese man pushed the though out of his head followed by Duo's arms from his shoulders and then the door to his office, the last in a fashion that might suggest that it had committed some sort of personal offense against him. Duo was right behind him as he stalked to his desk, taking a seat and opening his laptop. While it began to boot up he turned back to Duo, still talking.

"I mean not that living with you isn't a blast and everything, but your place is like in the middle of nowhere –"

"It's twenty minutes out of downtown, Duo."

"Yeah and that's twenty more that I could be sleeping!"

Heero rolled his eyes and turned back to his laptop, punching in the password without even looking at the keyboard, then reaching over to grab his coffee, Duo still ranting. He turned back to his computer, with the intent of checking his e-mail, but stopped dead in his tracks.

". . . like, do you think we need some sort of official cease-fire kind of thing? 'Cause, Hilde's had free reign of that house for like three weeks now and I'm not gonna go back there just to be bombarded with all the traps she set up and . . ." Duo trailed off as he looked over to Heero who was sitting in front of his laptop with a look on his face like he had just been told that he was being permanently reassigned to training new recruits in Antarctica.

Duo approached him slowly, suddenly gripped by dread as he gradually pieced together that something truly horrible had taken place. Heero was still in a state of shock, his mouth hanging open leaving the impression that he was completely dumfounded by whatever it was displayed in front of him; the color was beginning to drain from his face and his eyes had gone as wide as they could get. More than anything Duo was taken a back by the fact that whatever this monumental tragedy had been, it seemed to be coming from _Heero's_ computer.

He tentatively put a hand on his friend's shoulder, who did not react to usually unwelcome contact. "Heero, buddy, you alright man, you – " but the words died on Duo's lips as he looked down at Heero's laptop and immediately discovered the source of Heero's silent hysteria.

The usually blank desktop image had been replaced with . . . a much more colorful one. In its place were two people wearing, well Duo supposed that the strips of fabric didn't really count as costumes per say, but if their hats were any indication they were supposed to Romans of some sort. In all honesty it didn't really matter as they seemed to be . . . other things on their minds at that moment. However, the actual image was inconsequential, it was the implications that really mattered.

The girls had hacked Heero's computer.

"They put porn on our computers?!" To Heero's astonishment Duo's face split into a huge grin, "Man, I wonder what I got!!!" Duo's smile however faded at the sight of the glare he was receiving, "I mean uh . . . well, I'd better go see what the damage is." he responded in a most unconvincing voice before practically running out of Heero's office and down the hall in the direction of his own leaving Heero to his thoughts.

They had hacked his computer. _**HIS**_ computer. He, the man who personally designed the firewall for his department's mainframe, who had never once failed to obtain digital information he set out for, who had practically founded the Counter-Cyber Intelligence Division of Preventers, who had once obtained the Prime Minister's bank account numbers _while drunk_ when Duo had bet him to; _**his**_ computer had been hacked by three women with no particular knowledge or skill in the area. No, this couldn't be right, there had to be another explanation for how they had done this –

Heero's thoughts were cut off as Duo entered his office again, laptop in hand this time and opened the slim electronic device, pressing the button for it to power up then typing in his password, "Man this is great, Hilde never lets me keep this stuff in the house but now she's left it all over my computer."

The Japanese man looked at his American friend in a state of disbelief, only shaken from it as Duo's face contorted into one of confusion immediately followed by repulsion and let out a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a yell, "Awww dude!" He turned his head from the screen and pushed the computer to the edge of his lap, "Mine's covered in dudes!"

Had the circumstances been different, Heero might have found humor in this spectacle, but as things were all he could do was shake his head at Duo and walk back to his desk to try and deal with however the girls had done this. Was it a virus? No, they wouldn't have risked compromising the Preventer's mainframe. How the hell had they gotten access it all of this in the first –

The phone rang on his desk and despite the fact that he was really in no mood to speak to anyone he picked it up, ignoring the noises and ranting coming from Duo's direction, "This is Agent Yu –"

"Yuy, do you have any idea what those women did to my computer?!?!" Heero had to hold the phone away from his ear in order to keep himself from going deaf due to Wufei's yelling; the Chinese man however continued at a volume loud enough for Duo to hear as well, "It's covered in pictures of naked women doing the most repugnant things to each other! The tastelessness of these images defies simple explanation, I swear to God –"

"How come Wufei got girl porn and I got naked men?!" Duo sounded as though this was the greatest miscarriage of justice the world had ever seen.

"Duo shut-up."

"But I –"

"Shut-up, Duo" Heero held the receiver back up to his head to try and listen to Wufei, who had not stopped talking.

". . . practically every file I open, something else even more revolting than the last pops up that I have to delete and –"

Heero's head snapped up, "Wait, what?"

"I said that these pictures are some of the most vile and depraved things I have ever seen in my life and they only get worse as –"

"No!" Heero snapped at him, "What do you mean about the files?"

Wufei did not answer immediately, instead he just sniffed before responding, "Yuy have you tried to look at anything on your computer yet? They inserted these pictures into just about every file that I've opened or modified in the past month."

Heero lowered the phone from his ear, as Wufei continued to rage about how the girls would have even found pictures such as these. That, however, was not important; what was important was that every file on his computer now had to be checked to see when it had last been accessed. He turned to look back at Duo who was pouting next to his computer and shrugged to himself thinking that despite all of this he could be worse off and mentally noting _never_ to personally offend Hilde Schbeiker.

- - - - -

"I feel like that was almost too easy."

"Yes, well that's the beauty of this little plot, Hilde. They never would have seen it coming. And even now I'm sure they think that we somehow managed to hack into their computers rather than simply going to their offices and carrying out this little operation from there."

"On some level, I really can't blame them. I mean, would you ever think that someone was going to come into your office with your password and _physically_ hide porn all over your computer?"

"No, I'd assume it was a virus."

"Exactly, Miss Relena. They could set up the most secure firewall and the nastiest virus protection and whatever else they could come up with, but if someone were to actually go to their computer and do mess with it, none of that would matter."

"How did you actually get into Quatre's hotel room and to his computer, Dorothy?"

"Well it was simple really, once Francheska determined what room he was in at the Plaza I just introduced myself to the concierge and told him I had a meeting with Mr. Winner. The dear man took me right to his room and told me that Mr. Winner would be returning shortly and to make myself at home."

"And you sent that e-mail to the entire Magunac Corp?"

"Brilliant wasn't it?"

"A little sick, but yes, I suppose so."

"Ladies, I think we have to talk about preparing ourselves for what could be coming our way. We violate their precious laptops, they're going to be out for blood."

"Especially once Duo sees what I put on his."

- - - - -

"So after you drugged them and left them on top of a hotel roof, they got onto your computers and covered them in porn?"

"Affirmative."

"And now you need my help to get back at the three of them?"

"Four of them."

"Who else?"

"Sally, when I went back through the mainframe's log, I found that her clearance codes were used an hour before our computers were accessed."

"Looks like she figured out that you were the one in her lab, huh Wufei?"

"She is a cunning and wise opponent, we should not underestimate her."

"We shouldn't underestimate any of them. They didn't do any harm to the computers; they just hid pictures in various files. They did this just to show us that they could."

"And you three think that what you're proposing is a rational, well-calculated, proportional, response to this."

"Of course it is! You should have seen what I've been cleaning out of my hard drive!"

"Hmm. And you're sure they won't expect this?"

"Our only weak point is Quatre, they got him too but he seems to think that he deserved this and begged us not to retaliate."

"You think that he'd try to jeopardize the mission?"

"I wouldn't put it past him to attempt to warn them. We'll have to make sure he doesn't find out."

"Well then, all things considered this plan is a bit over the top for a situation like this, but I could see where you would have need for someone with my skills."

"You're in then?"

"I'll be in Brussels tomorrow."

"Thanks Trowa, I knew we could count on you buddy."

"As always . . . so what's the plan?"

-

-

-

-

Alright everyone, as we can see here this has officially gotten personal and things are about to come to a head, (finally!). The lines are being drawn, sides are being taken, and that means everyone. So the question is: Who do you _**want**_to win and who do you think _**deserves**_ to win? Who's gotten the best of the other and how? Let us see where your loyalties truly lie . . .


	10. Extraction

Alright, finally Chapter 10! I have to say that I was surprised by the generally overwhelming support that the girls got by everyone . . . that's not to say that the guys did have their supporters as well. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see . . . The next Occam's Razor Chapter will be up soon I promise!

As a slight side note, I have a message to pass along to everyone you from Purdy. Being the brave, noble, daring, courageous, and benevolent soul that she is Purdy is putting together a 2008 Church of Lemons. Her goal, (which naturally has my full support) is to try and revive the 1xR community a bit, although COL does accept pairings from outside GW. She's put together a great list of authors who have signed up for pledges and this year looks as though it will be very successful. If you're interested in participating get in touch with her to see if she can fit you in, the deadline is February 7, so do it soon!. Dust off the old keyboard and see what you come up with; if you don't want to write, be sure to check it out anyway, (seriously, she's been working her butt off and this year's going to be awesome). If COL isn't quite your thing, no big deal, but there are still other 1xR communities going strong out there that would love a few new members, (Blissful Ignorance is a fantastic one).

Regardless of what your favorite pairing or even just character is, we're all here for the same thing and that is that after all these years we still love to wonder and read about what happened to our favorite GW characters. Encourage those who are still writing, hell write something, anything, yourself, but let us not fade away!

-

(steps off the soap box)

-

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Ten – Extraction

Tynan

- - - - -

"Everyone's clear on their assignments?"

"Does anyone want to trade with me?"

"Maxwell, I swear to God, how an idiot like you was chosen for the honor of piloting one of the Gundams –"

"You can't switch with anyone, Duo."

"But how come I have to be the one to –"

"Duo, just because this is never going to work is no need to panic."

"Barton, if you're so convinced that this mission will be a failure why did you bother to sign on?"

"Well in the first place you asked me to and I was bored, secondly just because this is never going to work doesn't mean that it won't be entertaining."

"This isn't a joke, Trowa, we're expecting nothing short of your best performance; that and that alone will allow us to accomplish our objectives."

"You're sure that they're all going to be in the same place?"

"I hacked Relena's schedule, she's –"

"You had to hack into her schedule? As head of her security aren't you supposed to know where she is at all times?"

". . . Yes, well not since she refuses to even be left alone in a room with me anymore. Anyway, all four of them have a spa day with Noin planned for Saturday before she and Zechs leave to go back to the Sanq Kingdom the next day. They're all meeting at the Peacecraft Manor at 10:00 in the morning."

"And has anyone made arrangements for our wild card to be dealt with?"

"Quatre's too busy buying and sending every flower in 20 mile radius to the girls to even begin to try and foil our plans."

"We're sure of this?"

"We took every precaution to ensure that he was not aware that we contacted you. I know he expects that we plan to strike back, but not like this."

"That makes two of us . . . you guys still don't think that what you're planning might be a little over the top."

"Trowa, man, you've got to see the stuff I'm _still_ finding on my hard drive . . ."

"Our response is more than fair considering."

"Alright . . . I should warn you however, Cathy insisted on accompanying me to Brussels."

"What?!"

"I couldn't say no, besides she wanted to see everyone . . . I'm just going to have to make sure she's out of the way when we act."

"Actually, I think we have a way to kill two birds with one stone there . . ."

- - - - -

Noin looked at her sister-in-law curiously. Relena had been acting strangely the past several weeks that she and Milliardo had been in Brussels to visit. In the first place she was either acting paranoid as all hell or giggly and secretive. Secondly, Dorothy suddenly showed up for a short visit . . . but nearly two weeks later was still here. The two were sitting across the table from her, Sally and Hilde on either side of them, all of them chattering pleasantly over their meal. Noin couldn't pretend that it wasn't wonderful to see her friends . . . but something was off here.

In the three weeks she and Milliardo had been in Brussels, Noin had seen suspiciously little of Duo, though Hilde was frequently pleasant. Heero and Wufei also seemed to be keeping a distance, while Quatre had suddenly showed up on Earth and was constantly sending all four of the women, large extravagant flower arrangements on a daily basis. Maybe it was her imagination, Milliardo hadn't seemed to take notice and they were leaving in two days anyway, so as far as she was concerned –

Noin's thoughts were cut off by Paegan's entrance into the dinning room, "Excuse my interruption Miss Relena, but you have a call from Catherine Bloom."

Lucrezia Noin watched with a sense of fascination and curiosity as the other four women seated at the table all exchanged glances before her sister-in-law rose from her seat and followed her butler out of the dining room . . . only to return a few minutes later looking very pale.

The tension in the room was overwhelmingly obvious, and it was Dorothy who finally cracked under the pressure, "Well what did she say?!"

From her seat next to her still oblivious husband, Noin looked on as Relena raised her eyes to meet her friend's, a look of foreboding playing on her features.

"She and Trowa are coming to visit tomorrow."

- - - - -

Heero leaned against the black van behind him as he watched the plane taxi down the runway, coming to a stop only a few hundred feet from him. After a few short minutes the passengers began to disembark, and two of them made their way to where he was waiting . . . one slightly more enthusiastically than the other.

"Heero!" Without warning Cathy threw her arms around his neck, almost knocking the wind out of him, "It's so good to see you! I keep telling Trowa that we need to get up here more often but –"

"I think that Heero's starting to wish that we didn't Cathy." Trowa appeared at her side, carrying only a medium sized duffle bag.

She stepped back from Heero, giving her brother a look of exasperation. Heero, for his part just shrugged; they were on a tight schedule here, there was little time for idle chatter, "I'm sorry that we have to leave you here Cathy, I have orders to take Trowa back to HQ immediately so that we can meet with Une and –"

"Oh it's not a big deal Heero; you two were so nice to have Quatre to pick me up here."

Trowa nodded, "He should be here shortly, our shuttle arrived a little earlier than I thought it would."

Catherine sighed, "I guess I was just lucky that he happened to be in Brussels and had a free day to show me around the city. But I'll see Relena and everyone else tonight once they've finished up for the day . . . it's such a shame that she has to work even on a Saturday."

"Yeah . . ." Heero replied, keeping his voice as calm as possible, "We'd best be going." He watched as Trowa gave his sister a quick hug before joining him and the two walked back to the van, making sure to wait until Cathy was out of earshot before speaking.

"So she has no idea?"

Trowa shook his head, "I arranged for Quatre to pick her up here. Cathy thinks that I came to Brussels for a freelance assignment with Preventers and Quatre thinks that Cathy came to visit Relena, Hilde, Sally, and Dorothy. He doesn't know that I'm here as well."

"That will change as soon as she gets in the car with him."

"Well yes, but considering that I told Quatre that her flight was getting in half and hour later than it actually did, by the time he meets her and learns that I'm in Brussels as well and figures out what's going on we'll have too much of a head start on him to do anything."

Heero nodded, a small smile playing on his lips, as he and Trowa reached the van and he pulled open the side door revealing Duo and Wufei crouched inside, covered head to toe in black camouflage gear. Duo grinned, "Hey man! Long time no see."

Trowa looked them up and down, "You guys went all out with this huh?"

"Get in here and get changed Barton," Wufei barked at him, "we have to time all of this perfectly if we're going to get to the Manor before Zechs and Noin get back."

The Heavyarms pilot climbed inside the van, "And we're sure all four of them are going to be at the Manor?"

"They're all waiting there for Noin so they can go to the spa for the day . . . shame really."

- - - - -

Noin lifted her head as a strange and unsettling sound suddenly started coming from the front of the car her husband was driving. Zechs too had noted the sound and in his usual calm demeanor pulled the car off to the side of the road. As they both stepped out, smoke began emanating from under the hood; Noin heard her husband curse under his breath as he walked to the front of the car. After lifting the hood and a few minutes of poking around it became obvious that this particular vehicle wasn't going anywhere for a while.

"And my damn cell phone doesn't have service!"

Noin rolled her eyes and smiled, "Milliardo, we're only about two miles from the Manor, it's a nice day, we'll just walk back."

"You're going to be late for your spa day."

"Well these things happen." she reassured him, however in the back of her mind there was a little red warning light that began blinking.

- - - - -

Relena glanced up at the clock on the wall; it was 10:01. . . in all the years she had known Lucrezia Noin the woman had never been late for a single thing. In the living room to her left Sally, Dorothy and Hilde seemed to be equally concerned, but none dared to speak it. She told herself to calm down, that Lu was just running a little late, but suspicion still clouded her mind.

After Catherine's call yesterday it became obvious that the boys were planning something and had recruited Trowa to help them. However after much debate it was determined that they would not allow the ex-pilots to ruin their plans, especially considering it had taken Relena over five months to get an appointment at Brussels' most exclusive spa. Besides, Trowa had just arrived today, there was no way that they could already be ready to attack them.

10:03 . . . where the hell was Lucrezia?

- - - - -

Catherine settled into her seat next to Quatre, smiling at the blonde man, "I can't tell you how excited I am for today Quatre, it was so sweet of you to agree to take me around Brussels."

Quatre returned the smile as he steered them out of the airport and onto the highway, "Not at all, Catherine, I could certainly use the break myself. It's a shame that Trowa couldn't accompany you this time, but hopefully –"

"What do you mean?" she cut him off. "Trowa came in on the same flight as me."

Catherine watched as the man seated next to her visibly paled, when he finally spoke his voice shook, "Trowa's in Brussels?"

She nodded slowly, wondering why Quatre was apparently deeply disturbed by this information, "Yeah, Heero picked him up at the airport to take him to HQ; he's helping out with some sort of a mission, that why he came to –"

The rest of her sentence was cut off as Quatre suddenly shifted the car into high gear, and floored the gas, pushing her back into her seat as they veered off the highway and toward the residential district.

- - - - -

Noin lifted her head at a strange sound approaching them very quickly. No sooner had she registered what it was than her husband had seized her around the waist and pulled her off to the side of the generally unused road they were making their way down. She watched as a black van with Preventers tags and plates sped past them and turned onto the private road that led to the Peacecraft Manor. Milliardo was cursing under his breath next to her about how he thought that they gave driving instructions at the Academy, but Noin ignored him, instead trying to figure out if what she thought she had just seen was correct.

Was that Heero driving that van?

- - - - -

"So after they managed to get their cars into their offices the boys drugged all three of them and left them on top of a sky scraper, and then the girls, with Sally's help this time broke into their computers and covered them in porn?" Catherine could hardly believe the story she was hearing as she held on for dear life; Quatre was driving like a maniac. They were headed to Relena's home, where he apparently had to go to warn the girls about . . . well something that dealt with all this.

"Yes, and now that your brother's here, it means that they've recruited him to help them in whatever it is that they're planning." Quatre's knuckles were white from his vice like grip on the steering wheel. He glanced down at his watch, "Damn, they had a good half hour start on us, I'm not sure that we'll make it in time."

Not knowing what else to do Catherine nodded numbly, and gripped the arm rest next to her as Quatre took a hard left towards Relena's Manor.

- - - - -

"Heero, take it easy man, will ya?"

"We're running behind schedule. Wufei sabotaged Zechs' car, but we can't risk that he and Noin will still make it back to the house before we've carried out our mission."

"We also have to make sure we beat Quatre there. He's probably figured out what's going on by now and is headed the same place we are."

"Once we're inside the compound we're to move into position as quickly as possible, no one moves until I give the signal. I'll leave the van out front, you're to meet back out there with your target within five minutes. Are there any last minute questions?"

He was greeted with silence.

- - - - -

Noin stepped to the side of the road as yet another car flew by them and turned up the road to the Manor. Immediately, she recognized the driver, but this time her husband seemed to catch on too.

"Lu, was that Winner?"

- - - - -

Relena was now pacing and she was by no means the only one feeling anxious.

"Girls, it's 10:15," Hilde stood from her seat to address the group, "I think it's time to start considering that something is going on here."

"Agreed," Dorothy chimed in, "I'll start preparations for a search party, Sally you –"

"Dorothy, she's fifteen minutes late, I hardly think that – Eep!" Relena jumped nearly a foot in the air and whirled around to face her front door as it burst open and a frazzeled, frantic looking Quatre pushed through it dragging a bewildered Catherine Bloom behind him.

"Q-quatre," she stammered, "what are you –"

He closed the distance between them, seizing her by the shoulders his eyes wild; Sally, Hilde, and Dorothy stood from their seat to join them, "Relena, you four need to come with me, we have to get you out of here. Heero, Duo, and Wufei, they've got Trowa with them and –"

"Yes we already know that Quatre," Dorothy drawled, "but he's only arrive today, I hardly think –"

"No!" Quatre practically yelled at her, "Their van is parked out front, they're already here!"

And with those words all hell broke loose.

From seemingly nowhere, four black clad figures burst into the room, each making a beeline for a different woman. Acting on instinct, the girls formed a circle, their backs to the center as the four men slowly closed in on them.

Duo pulled off his ski mask, the other three following suit, "Now why don't you ladies just come with us, nice and quiet like, and this will be over before you know it."

Realization struck Relena like a ton of bricks, "You're kidnapping us?!"

Sally scoffed beside her, "And you think that we're just going to let you?"

"I don't see how you're going to stop us." Wufei sneered at her.

"Well we're certainly not going without a fight!" Dorothy boldly declared, lunging forward to snatch a heavy silver candle stick from the coffee table, raising it above her head, "Go for the weak ones girls!" And with that she launched herself forward, pushing Trowa out of the way and swinging at a startled and terrified Quatre, who barely managed to duck in time.

"Miss Dorothy, wait, I –"

Sally sprung at Heero, who easily side stepped her, but was suddenly brought to the floor by Catherine. He was on his feet again in a matter of seconds, but facing down two very angry women . . . one of which was now brandishing several long, and deadly looking daggers she had apparently pulled out of thin air.

Off in one of the corners of the living room, Duo chuckled to himself as he and Wufei closed in on Relena, "Come on Princess, there's no way you're getting out of here so just –"

All three stopped as a painful sounding crack resonated in the air and turned just in time to see Quatre fall to the floor, Dorothy barely taking a moment to admire her handiwork before starting in on Wufei, "Get your hands off of her, you chauvinistic pig!"

In the middle of the room, Hilde stood on the opposite side of the coffee table from Trowa, each countering any step that the other made in their direction. Hilde eyed the room wildly, looking for something, anything that she could use to defend herself, but in that second of distraction Trowa had lunged across the table, make a grab for her wrist. She barely managed to wrench it from his grasp and on instinct bolted from the living room and down one of the Manor's many hallways, Trowa hot on her tail.

Heero watch Catherine steady her hand and dove to the left, but he knew it was already too late. The air was cut by a high slashing noise and next he knew a dagger was pinning his jacket to the wall behind him. He desperately jerked the weapon out of the wall, but in that short time three more daggers had lodged themselves in the plaster and wood behind him, two through his pants and one in the other side of his jacket. Before he could even react, Sally was on top of him, using her body to pin him against the wall.

Heero twisted his head to survey the room, the mission had been compromised, it was time to cut their losses. "Fall back!" he barely managed to gasp as Sally pushed him even farther into the wall, "Grab who you can and make a break for the rendezvous point!"

Relena and Duo locked eyes for a moment before he shrugged at her, a silly grin on his face, "Sorry Princess." His hand lashed out, seizing her wrist and dragging her in front of him as he gracefully pulled a black, cloth bag from his back pack and threw it over her head. Relena was too stunned to do anything and suddenly felt Duo's shoulder in her stomach and next she knew the top half of her body was upside down, apparently having been thrown over Duo's shoulder.

Her arms her pinned at her sides by the bag but she kicked her legs furiously, "Duo Maxwell, put me down this instant!"

"Not gonna happen, Princess" he responded as he dashed for the front door.

Hilde continued down the hall at top speed, rounding a corner so fast that she slid on the floor and lost precious seconds righting herself. Trowa was only steps behind her and would catch her any second; she scanned the hallway frantically looking for an escape, her eyes finally coming to rest on a large door that looked like it led outside. Without a second thought she pulled it open stumbled inside, slamming it shut behind her and bracing herself as Trowa threw his weight against it from the other side. She held him off the first time, but with his second attempt the door fell open and the Heavyarms pilot towered in the doorway before her.

"There's no where to run, Hilde."

Hilde's eye's widened as she turned around to realize that this door did not in fact lead outside, but into what in the dark looked like some kind of a large closet.

Relena desperately racked her brain, trying to come with something to prevent Duo from taking her out of the house . . . and suddenly it came to her. Reaching her right hand behind her back to the left one, her fingers found her watch, the one Heero had instructed her to wear every day, and pressed the little button on the side.

All present stopped in their tracks as a loud buzzing sound suddenly filled the air, red lights began flashing, and large steel plates began closing over the doors and windows.

Trowa and Hilde simultaneously spun around just in time to see the door they had come through slam shut behind them. The room was thrown into darkness as beeping and whirring sounds filled it and several large overhead lights came on, blinding both of them for a moment.

Duo swore under his breath, dashing forward and sliding Relena under the closing metal door before following her himself.

Dorothy looked up at the sound of the commotion, which was all Wufei needed. Back flipping he put enough distance between them to make a break for the window, throwing himself through it just as the metal door slid shut behind him.

Duo snatched a still protesting Relena up from the ground, throwing her over his shoulder once again so that he could carry her to the van. He opened the back doors, tossing her inside and climbing through to get to the driver's seat. The braided man quickly surveyed the area and with a curse determined that no one else had made it out. "Looks like it's just you and me, princess."

"Duo, I swear to God, you let me go right now or I'll –"

Relena's threats were drowned out by the engine roaring to life. Duo shifted the van into gear and took off down the driveway towards the estate's gate.

- - - - -

Noin and Zechs were walking a little faster than would be considered normal as they approached the Peacecraft Manor's gates. Just as they were about to make their way inside the gates suddenly began to open and a large black van blew through them, barely clearly the wrought iron sides as it sped off down to the main road.

Both exchanged glances, not entirely sure what had happened. Again, however, it was Zechs that spoke.

"Was that Maxwell?"

- - - - -

Hilde pulled on the door again, but to no avail. Whatever had just happened, it apparently locked down this room . . . whatever this room was.

"We appear to be in the panic room." Trowa answered as if reading her thoughts.

"The panic room?" She turned to where Trowa was hunched over one of the many computer screens in the small space.

"Yes, Heero set it up when he became Relena's head of security. Apparently she activated her panic button, which locked down the Manor."

"And let me guess, we're stuck in here until someone lifts the lockdown."

"That would be correct."

". . . great."

- - - - -

Dorothy, Sally, and Catherine glared down at the two men tied up and gagged on the floor before them. Quatre was starting to wake up and sporting a large bump on the side of his head, Heero on the other hand was apparently trying to kill them with his eyes.

"So what do you want to do with them?"

"We need to find out where the other three of them have taken Relena and Hilde." Sally answered.

Dorothy nodded in agreement, "I think that it's safe to say that we're not going to get anything out of that one." she pointed at Heero, "I think the blonde's our best bet." Quatre's eyes widened at Dorothy's insinuation, but his protests were unintelligible with the gag in his mouth. His captor turned back to her friends. "You two deal with Agent Yuy here for now, just put him somewhere where he can't make any trouble."

Sally nodded and hoisted Heero to his feet, by the electric cords he was now tied up with; she glance back at Catherine, "We're going to need to come up with some other way to restrain him, this one's probably the craftiest of the group."

"Just make sure that he's not going any where in case we need him." Dorothy told them before turning back to where Quatre was squirming on the floor, "In the meantime Mr. Winner and I are going to have a little chat."

- - - - -

Wufei dropped down from the fence and took off without missing a beat. Getting off of the Peacecraft estate had really been too easy, he should tell Yuy about the lacks security once they got him back. For the meantime however, the rendezvous point was just ahead of him . . . though he couldn't say for sure if anyone else would be waiting there for him.

- - - - -

Relena felt the wind knocked out of her as Duo set her down on a hard floor. They were inside now wherever they were.

"Now if I take the bag off of you are you going to behave yourself?"

"Duo . . ."

"Alright, alright, geez it was just a question."

Her vision was suddenly restored to her as Duo pulled the black fabric from over her head. She surveyed the room and found herself in a large, dusty room. The furniture was covered in old sheets and the windows boarded up. She couldn't help but feel like she had seen this place before, and then suddenly it hit her.

"This is the old Bremmer Estate on the property next to mine!" Relena glared at Duo, her expression one of outrage and incredulousness, "You tied me up and put me in a bag to bring me _three hundred yards_?!?"


	11. Uncoordinated Efforts

Lou: I was thinking while you were asleep

- smiles shyly - . . . Hey, remember me? Well I am in fact still alive and writing; I honestly don't know why it took me so long to come up with this chapter . . . well actually I do, it's because every single instructor out there thinks that you have nothing better to do with your life than to study for their class. The good news is that the next chapter is finally the last one for MAD. For those reading Occam's Razor, Chapter 16 is up, and Chapter 17 should be up soon, and I promise that I'm going to try and get back on track with my regular updates.

Thank you for your continued reviews everyone; I can't tell you how much they help with the writing! But before we get to the story, since it's been such a long time since my last update, here's a quick run down of what's happened:

- Duo's kidnapped Relena to an old house near her Manor, Wufei's right behind them.

- Trowa and Hilde have found themselves locked in a panic room of Heero's design.

- Heero and Quatre have been captured by Dorothy, Sally, and Catherine within the Manor.

- Zechs and Noin are walking back to the Manor as their car broke down.

Alright, enjoy!

Mutually Assured Destruction

Chapter Eleven – Uncoordinated Efforts

Tynan

- - - - -

Three figures lingered in the middle of a darkly lit room; one (forcibly) seated in a large, ornate armchair, the other two before him, regarding him with both curiosity and caution and holding a phone out to the incapacitated individual.

"Do you think that Relena's bedroom is really the best place for him?"

"It's the only room in this house that no one is going to just go barging into. And at the rate we're going . . ." she swung around to face the man tied to the chair before her, "Heero, if you don't make the call they're going to storm the house and then this little scheme of yours will be discovered."

"Sally, he didn't respond the first five times, why –"

"Because Cathy, Agent Yuy here doesn't seem to understand that with the Peacecraft Manor on lock-down, the small army of Preventers forces stationed around it are going to think something happened and Relena's in danger! They've already phoned him four times," she waved a small black cell phone in front of her friend, "they're getting ready to blow up the front door and force their way in unless you call them and say that there was a system malfunction when you were testing it and not to try and enter the premise until you've corrected it.

"Besides," the brunette leveled her eyes at the man in front of her, "I would not want to be the one responsible for that once Relena gets back."

". . . Give me the phone."

"Right, like we're going to untie you. Just hold it up to his ear Cathy."

"You're not going to be able to keep me here very long."

"He's right. I think this is going to be trickier than we originally thought."

"Maybe we should take Dorothy's approach and knock him out."

"Cathy, what do you think Relena has in her bedroom that will actually knock out Heero Yuy?"

"It was just a suggestion! Besides, we can't leave him like this. He's right! He'll get out as soon as our backs are turned."

"Yes, well that's why I got the duct tape. I don't care how flexible or double jointed a person is, there is simply no way they can get out of a chair that all four of their extremities and their torso have been completely duct taped to."

"You're the doctor. But we still have to consider that he could just find a way to leave and take the chair with him."

"Yes . . . well about that, depending on how brave you're feeling . . ."

"What did you have in mind?"

"You see, previous to our involvement in this little . . . war, Hilde and Relena were successful in becoming, to my knowledge, the only people in history to ever have prevented Heero Yuy from leaving a room when and how he saw fit."

"Interesting, and how did they achieve this feat?"

"Well, that's where the bravery part comes in."

- - - - -

"Duo . . ."

There was a snorting sound followed by a grunt in reply.

"Duo!"

She poked him with her foot but still elicited no response.

"Damn it, Duo! Wake up!"

With a swift kick to the ribs, Duo Maxwell shot to his feet, looking around the room wildly for a moment before realizing where he was. "Geez Relena, way to give a guy a heart attack, you –"

But his hostage was in no mood, "Duo, you have got to be the worst kidnapper in history! What kind of a criminal falls asleep instead of guarding –"

"Hey! I wasn't asleep!"

She raised her eyebrows, "Oh, really? With the drooling, the twitching, and muttering to yourself, which might otherwise be described as a schizophrenic episode –"

"Alright! So I dozed off! You try sleeping on Heero's couch for three and half weeks, the guy's a freakin' insomniac, he goes to bed at like one in the morning and wakes up at five! How am I supposed to get any sleep with him –"

Both of them froze at the sound of footsteps crossing the floor on the level above them. Duo shoved Relena behind him, unsure if this person was one of the guys coming to back to the rendezvous point or one of the girls already coming to rescue their friend. He breathed a sigh of relief as Wufei appeared from the staircase; Relena groaned behind him.

"Hey! Glad to see you made it out man!" Duo strode forward to clap a hand on Wufei's shoulder; the Chinese man for his part only looked toward where Relena was pouting on the floor.

"Shouldn't you tie her up?"

Relena lifted her head to speak but was cut off by Duo, "Wufei, come on man, you really think she's gonna be able to get away?"

The Foreign Minister scoffed, but both men ignored her as their thoughts turned instead to strategy. "Are you the only other one that made it out?"

Wufei nodded, "As far as I know. Trowa's sister and Sally captured Yuy and Catalonia knocked out Winner before the alarm even went off."

"What about Trowa?"

"I don't know," he shrugged in reply, "last I saw him he was chasing your girlfriend. They probably got him too when the place got locked down."

"Great." Duo sighed and threw himself down on one of the many covered, dusty couches that littered the room, "So they got two of our guys –"

"Three, if you count Winner."

"Fine, three then, and we've just got the princess here. So now what?"

Wufei took a seat on the couch opposite him, "We wait, consider our options," he grinned in and uncharacteristic way and jerked his head toward Relena, "At some point they're going to try and get her back."

- - - - -

Trowa rolled his eyes, he wasn't usually one to lose his cool by any stretch of the imagination, but Hilde's incessant pacing was beginning to get to him. "Hilde, walking back and forth constantly like that isn't going to get the door open and you're making me dizzy, would you please just sit down?"

Hilde didn't even turn to look at him, not breaking her stride, "No, if I sit I'll start to think terrible things, like 'How hard is it to hire a hit man?' and 'Do they take credit cards?'"

"From what I heard you and your friends are not entirely without blame in this incident."

She rounded on him mercilessly, "You guys broke into Relena house to kidnap us! What could we possibly have done to –" A thought struck her. "Hey wait . . . what is it exactly that you were going to do once you had kidnapped us?"

Trowa shrugged nonchalantly, "Duo had some elaborate plan involving taking the four of you to a cabin out in the woods and enslaving you for the rest of the weekend –"

"Enslaving us?!" Hilde looked as though she might find a way to rip 8" tempered steel door off its reinforced hinges so she could go strangle her boyfriend.

Her co-captive however, did not seem to take note as he only nodded and continued on in a deadpan voice, "I think Duo had this little outfit all picked out for you and everything."

Trowa sat back and waited for the inevitable outburst, but to his surprise Hilde only sighed loudly and flung herself back against the wall behind her, "Trowa?"

"Yeah?"

"You'd know where I could find a good hit man, right?"

- - - - -

Zechs tried not to look confused as he stood on the grounds of his family's Brussels' manor, but considering the scene before him that was quite difficult. The house had apparently gone into lock down mode; all of the windows and doors were covered with plates of thick steel. However, despite the evident cause for alarm the Preventers officers that guarded the manor were only standing around outside, looking at it with an expression similar to his own. The exception to this was one man with a small crowd gathered around him; upon further inspection Zechs discovered that he was talking on a cell phone. As he approached the man, he heard just the end of his conversation.

"Understood, sir. I will issue the order, sir. Thank you, Agent Yuy."

The officer jumped nearly a foot in the air when Zechs tapped his shoulder, but that did not bother him at this moment, "Officer, was that Yuy?"

"S-sir, yes, Agent Yuy –"

"So what the hell is going on?!"

"Milliardo", Noin suddenly appeared by his side, "stop yelling and give him a chance to answer." She smiled sweetly to the man, "What the hell's going on officer?"

"Agent Noin, ma'am," he snapped to attention, "Ma'am I've just received word from Agent Yuy, who is current inside the dwelling, that there was a malfunction in the security system when he was running tests on it, ma'am. The system short circuited and went into lock-down, he's currently working to –"

"That's fine, Officer," Noin waved her hand, "you're dismissed."

Zechs waited until the man had saluted and was out of earshot before turning back to his wife, "Something's going on here."

She rolled her eyes in response, "No, really Milliardo? I would have thought that Heero always screws up routine system –"

"Come on." he cut her off as he grabbed her hand and began leading her around the side of the manor.

"Where are we going?"

"There's a hidden door in the gardener's shed that leads to a tunnel that goes into the manor; I have the access code. Yuy set it up so Relena could get out if the manor was on lock down and needed to escape, but it should work both ways."

Noin sighed and allowed her husband to usher her through one of the gardens, the shed coming into view as they rounded a corner. She couldn't help the feeling that they might be better off just waiting outside.

- - - - -

"So you tied –"

"Duct taped." Cathy corrected.

"Yes, my apologies, you _duct taped_ Heero to a chair, _naked_, and hid him in Relena's bedroom." Dorothy tilted her head to the side as she regarded her friends.

Said two women nodded sharply, clearly very proud of their achievement; the blonde woman, in turn simply cast them a sly and devious smile, before answering with a slight laugh, "Well, he won't be going anywhere at least." She turned from them and flipped her hair over her shoulder, "However, you're a couple weeks late, Relena's birthday was the 7th."

As her friend broke down into giggles, she gestured for them to follow her through the kitchen and into the atrium around the back of the mansion. The scene they came upon was . . . odd to say the least. The usually open room was thrown into near darkness by the steel panels that now covered the large floor to ceiling windows. The only light came from several lamps which had been placed around an elegant wrought iron café style table, which was set for afternoon tea. In one of the two seats was a desperate and slightly frightened looking Quatre Winner, gagged and tied to his chair.

Sally and Cathy took in the sight as Dorothy continued forward, planting herself in the chair opposite the young businessman and lifting her tea cup to her lips, taking a sip of the dark liquid. "Now, Mr. Winner," she set the delicate china back down, "I have a few questions to ask you."

Quatre mumbled unintelligibly against the gag but Dorothy ignored him as she stood and leaned over the table menacingly, "We have you, and Yuy's tied up upstairs, but I think we both know that we won't be getting anything out of him, so this falls to you." She reached forward and pulled the gag out of his mouth, "Barton, Maxwell, and Chang got away with Relena and Hilde, where did they take them!?"

"I don't know!" Quatre gasped, looked up to Dorothy, "Miss Dorothy, I swear I don't know anything about this! I came here to warn you, I never thought that –"

"Liar!!" She pounded the table, rattling the china, "I know that you've been with them all along, you're the only one who could have given them the information they needed to pull off that little stunt at the restaurant and the roof top!"

"No!" Quatre recoiled, a look of true horror on his face, "No, Dorothy, please, it was an accident, I swear that I didn't mean –"

"Enough!" she silenced him with a wave of her hand and after a tense moment settled herself back down in her chair, "I can see, Mr. Winner, that this is getting us no where," she shook her head and lifted her glass of tea to her lips again, draining it, "you're forcing me to do this."

Quatre's eyes widened in horror as Dorothy released the delicate piece of china and allowed it to plummet to the ground, shattering into innumerable pieces on the cold, unforgiving floor. "Dorothy, what are you doing?! That's the tea set I gave Miss Relena! It belonged to Queen Victoria of England, it's priceless!"

Dorothy lowered her eyes solemnly and touched her finger tips together on top of the table, "I derive no pleasure from this, Mr. Winner, however" she reached across the setting and lifted his cup, saucer and all, still filled to the brim, and held it over the edge of the table, "if you will not cooperate, I shall have to continue –"

"But I don't know anything!!"

"Fine then."

Cathy and Sally both flinched at the sound of breaking glass followed by Quatre's anguished yells.

- - - - -

"So for like a month I devote every minute of free time I have to this proposal. I do the research, I check the statistics, cover all my bases, everything! So I go to see Une, to give her my proposal, she takes one look at it and tells me to leave her office, and after she pushed me out and slammed the door I hear her laughing in there! Can you believe that?!""

Relena had stopped trying to sound interested over an hour, "It's shocking Duo, truly shocking. I mean, how could Commander Une not understand the benefits that the Preventers Bureau would reap from forming a 'Ninja Division'?"

Her sarcasm apparently went unnoticed, "I know! I even volunteered to lead it!"

Relena sighed and let her head fall back against the wall behind her. Duo had not stopped ranting since Wufei had arrived. The Chinese man for his part was seated on the couch opposite them, eyes close and perfectly still and silent. How he could tune out Duo, Relena could not even begin to guess, but she was getting restless. "So are you guys just going to sit here and do nothing?"

"We're waiting." Wufei replied in a deadpan voice.

Relena gave a humorless laugh, "Waiting for what? An army of Preventers to show up?"

Wufei's eyes opened and Relena found herself locked with the obsidian orbs, "I hardly think that your friends are going to send anyone after us . . . not that they'd know where to look anyway. But also," his face broke into a sly smile, "I don't think they're going to be so willing to admit to your own wrong doings in all this."

"Wrong doings?" Relena rolled her eyes, "First, even if we had broken any laws, you and Duo went far beyond our transgressions when you kidnapped a member of the Prime Minister's Cabinet."

"Oh, see you have this all wrong, Foreign Minister, we were only securing you to be brought in for questioning as to your role in falsifying official Preventer's documents."

Relena practically choked in surprise, "Falsifying doc – what are talking about?"

Wufei leaned back in the covered couch, "You and Maxwell's girlfriend took it upon yourselves to sign Maxwell and Yuy up for an event they never consented to attend –"

"Oh yes, this as opposed to repeated events of breaking in and entering –"

" – representing yourselves as them and therefore falsifying –"

" – an ESUN cabinet member's office no less!"

"Hey guys," Duo lifted his head and waved for his friends' attention, "come on, let's not make this –"

"You stay out of this!" they responded in unison before going back at each other's throats.

- - - - -

Heero shifted uncomfortably in his chair . . . this day was not going as he had planned. He took a minute to evaluate his situation. The extraction operation had been a near complete failure, he had been captured, as had Quatre who had now become more of a liability than anything useful. Trowa and Wufei's whereabouts were unknown; only Duo's escape with Relena was confirmed. As for himself he was duct taped to a large armchair and hidden in Relena's bedroom after Catherine and Sally had cut all of his clothes off of him. As if all of this was not bad enough, he couldn't find anything in Relena's plush, comfortable bedroom to aid him in his bid for freedom, and even if he could get himself out of the chair, the fact was that he was still completely naked.

The faint sound of a scream somewhere off in the distance brought Heero out of his thoughts. It sounded as though Dorothy was doing something . . . unpleasant to Quatre. He couldn't help but feel a little bad, Quatre was after all for all intents and purposes an innocent bystander in this affair; on top of that he wouldn't wish an enraged Dorothy Catalonia upon anyone . . .

No, today was definitely not going as he had planned.

- - - - -

"That's odd."

Hilde lifted her head to where Trowa was staring at one of the many computer screens that lined the walls of the small room. "Did you find a way to get us out of here?"

"No," Trowa shook his head, "but apparently someone found a way to get in." He pointed to one of the screens which was displaying a map of some kind. Along one of the conduits was a line of blinking red lights, slowly but steadily more lights were coming on. "There's someone walking down this hallway, those blinking lights are the switches they're setting off as they go."

"Heero set up tracking switches along every hall in the Manor?"

"Just one hall . . . and it's actually not in the Manor." Trowa pointed to the lights on the screen again, "It looks like someone's coming in from the outside."

"Like through a secret tunnel?"

"Mm-hm."

"That tunnel doesn't happen to go here by chance, does it?"

- - - - -

"Grand theft auto, Foreign Minister!"

"We brought them back, Agent Chang!"

"Then add illegal trespassing into Preventer's restricted areas!"

"Trespassing?! How about trespassing into an ESUN's official's office and destruction of personal and government property?!"

"We didn't destroy it, we just attached it to your ceiling! You got it all down!!"

"Alright, both of you did things that you shouldn't have –"

"Shut-up, Maxwell!"

- - - - -

Noin ducked her head as she followed her husband down the dimly lit hallway. By her best guess they were under the Manor now. But where they were going she couldn't say.

In front of her, Zechs stopped abruptly, and signaled with his flashlight for her stop as well. She squinted into the darkness and discovered a large, steel door in front of them. "Are we at the end?"

"Almost," Zechs was punching numbers into a small keypad next to the door. It beeped an affirmative sound and the blonde man seized the massive, wrought iron handle and began to pull the door open. "there's a set of stairs back here that will take us inside."

"And where will that bring us?"

Zechs grunted under the strain of the door, but finally managed to pull it all the way open, "The third story of the house, to a hidden door in Relena's closet." He started up the narrow, spiral set of stairs, gesturing for her to follow. "Yuy put it there so that she'd have a way out if something ever happened."

Noin nodded, even though she knew her husband couldn't see and concentrated on getting up the perilous stairway, "Milliardo, what do you think is going on?"

"I have no idea," he jumped the last step onto the landing, and turned around to give his wife a hand up before handing her the flashlight as he pushed against the trap door in the ceiling, lifting it up and allowing light to spill into the stairwell, "but I have no doubt that Yuy's got something to do with it."

With a final push, he moved the piece of wood aside and pulled himself up through the opening, Noin right behind them. They found themselves in Relena's spacious walk-in closet, her vast wardrobe surrounding them on all sides. Just as Zechs was about to begin making his way towards the door he froze, there was a sound coming from Relena's bedroom. Zech's met his wife's eyes, and she nodded in silent agreement; both drew their guns and made their way stealthy towards the door.

With one swift kick it broke open and the couple burst into the room, "Preventers, freeze or –"

With a sharp gasp, Noin covered her eyes and ducked back into the closet; her husband, on the other hand, gasped and sputtered, rooted to where he stood as their eyes came to rest on the room's sole occupant.

"Wha – but . . . What the hell, Yuy?!"

Heero stared back at him like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide as he struggled to speak against the duct tape over his mouth.

Zechs, for his part seemed to have recovered from his state of shock and advanced menacingly on Heero, "Yuy, where the hell is Relena and why are you naked and tied to a chair in her bedro –"

His words were cut off as he was jerked back into the closet by his wife, who slammed the door shut behind him. "Lu, what are you –"

"Milliardo, I think you need to take a minute to think about this situation –"

"A van full of the pilots came it, only one of them went out, the mansion's on lock down, the Preventer's have no idea what's going on, Relena's missing, and Yuy's taped to a chair in her bedroom, and he's naked!"

"Alright, well that sounds about right . . ." Noin suppressed a giggle and leaned against the wall, "So this is probably just about your worst nightmare, huh?"

Zechs raked his hand through his hair as he began pacing, "No, this is like my fifth worst nightmare . . . maybe my fourth, no fifth . . . fourth of fifth, I didn't bring the list with me!!" He sighed and let his shoulders fall, "So what do we do?"

"Well," Noin started riffling through the racks of clothes behind her, "we should probably try and find something for Heero to wear, then go out there and ask him what he knows about what's going on here."

- - - - -

"Illegal access to the Preventer's mainframe and possession of grotesque pornographic images!"

"Poisoning a government official and two private citizens and impersonation of a cab driver!"

"Guys, really . . . come on –"

"He said to shut-up Maxwell!"

- - - - -

Sally leaned back in her seat next to Catherine. The floor in front of them was covered in shards of broken china, puddles of tea, and the occasional smashed pastry. At the center of all of it sat a confident and composed Dorothy and opposite her a disheveled, pathetic, shell of a man. Sweat glistened his brow and his normally spotless clothes were covered with speckles of tea and jelly. Sally wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.

Quatre lifted his head, his eyes locking with his tormenter's, his voice was weak, "Miss Dorothy, please . . . I'm begging you . . . I – I don't know anything, I can't –"

"Mr. Winner," Dorothy poured more tea into a new cup, and took a sip, "we've been through this, I simply don't believe you." She set the cup back down on its saucer then lifted both and held them over the edge of the table, above the pile of shattered china. "And as before, if you continue to lie to me –" Dorothy stopped dead at the sound of someone approaching the room.

Sally and Catherine heard it too, the latter jumping from her seat and arming herself with one of throwing knives. But she lowered it in shock as the last three people she expected to see entered the room.

Noin came in first, followed by her husband who was standing very close to Heero . . . who Catherine noticed was wearing what appeared to be a pair of Relena's pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt. Upon further inspection she discovered that the two men were taped together at the wrist. She looked desperately to Sally, hoping that the older woman could come up with a logical explanation for this scene, but her friend only returned her panic stricken look.

Dorothy however, stood from her seat and smiled pleasantly, as if there were nothing strange going on. "Why Milliardo, Lucrezia how good to see you, we were getting worried about –"

"Don't bother Dorothy," Noin cut her off, "Heero's already told us what's been going on."

The blonde woman looked incredulous at this statement, "H-he told you?!"

"Yes," Zechs answered for her as he stepped forward, dragging Heero with him and pulled two chairs up to the table, placing himself in the one next to Dorothy and Heero in the one next to Quatre, "Now, none of us are leaving this room until we all come to an agreement as to how we're going to resolve this little on going conflict." He glared in Heero's directions, "We'll start with you two. Where did Maxwell, Chang, and Barton take my sister and Hilde?"

- - - - -

"Trespassing in a men's locker room!"

"Illegal application of epoxy to government property!"

"Alright, enough both of you!"

"Shut-up, Maxwell!"


End file.
